Cold effects on Goto mount battery

[skir]

I got out tonight for the first time in a while but it was a bit of a mixed bag in terms of what I got done. Had a close look at Betelgeuse and Sirius and a cluster in Auriga. But then I think my mount did a meridian flip if I have that right as suddenly it was thinking that stuff was directly opposite where it actually was. So I switched off and realigned. Setup on cappella and denebola and that went fine. So I sent it to look at m94 in cor caroli but it flew off to somewhere completely off the mark and trying it with another location the same thing happened. At this point I called it quits as I was cold and I think the kit was too.

Is it possible that the leisure battery I use to power the mount had got too cold to operate properly? Not only is it cold tonight but a frost was beginning to form on my kit before I came in, so a lot of dew about too.

Also is there a setting in the nexstar software for stopping the scope from coming into contact with the tripod at all?

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[skir]

Anyone?

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[peeceeTal2M]

The cold will decrease battery efectiveness, make sure its allways fully charged and the connections are clean and tight, i allways had mine in a insulated bag(cool bag) during the winter and if it got really cold put a hot water bottle inside with the battery There should be a setting to stop scope hitting the mount but you'll have to check the manual as i'm not familiar with nexstar software.

[skir]

Prey sure the battery was fully charged but I'll put it on the charger to check it out. I was also thinking that I'll need to put the battery in some sort of insulating box or bag. Would one of those marine plastic battery boxes be up to the job? If I added insulation what would be the best stuff to use?

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[Dude_with_the_tube]

i would consider that it is more or less batteries fault itself.there is no way that your telescope could of drained the battery out so quick that the scope failed to operate with your leisure battery.Also any battery is meant to be operational until atliest -20 Celsius where we have not seen such a temperatures in Uk for a while.Anything below -20 will have an effect on the battery,but then again,telescope is not a car engine what draws a lot of power from the battery to start with.If your battery is over a year or 2 years old and has been charged up a lot of times,then i am afraid it is time for you to look for another one as frequent charges do kill the batteries life unfortunately.Suggest you also check the connections from your scope to the battery as weak/un-secure connections do affect the operationals of your scope.thats my 5 p to the case.

[faulksy]

dont think it was cold enough last night to effect you power tank/battery, i was in mid wales were the temperature dropped to -6 my scope tripod and my jacket i was wearing was covered in frost even my container which had milk in froze but there was no effect on my scope.check your wiring and your battery

[skir]

It's a brand new battery and last night was its first time out. Put it on the charger and that was showing as just out of the green charged area. So should have been enough charge in it.

So possibly a connection issue somewhere. I think I'll put it in something to insulate it next time just to be safe as well.

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[faulksy]

when i first had my cpc i only used it on mains power and all was fine, the first time i took it to dark site i used the supplied 12v power lead and my scope did the same as yours and the scope went just past vertical (fork mounted ota) and my eye piece nearly hit the mount, didnt think a lot of it so realigned and tried again same thing happened, so i carried on for a few hours using the scope manually. tried again the night after using mains power and all was fine so i put it down to the battery not having enough capacity, so bought a bigger a/h battery same thing happened again, turns out it was the supplied lead, in the cigar plug all the wires were bare and touching each other, re terminated the plug and all previous problems ended, so this could be the same with yours check your plug

[skir]

Thanks for the info. Its cleared up here so I'm going out again tonight and I'll see how it goes.

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[Steep]

I'm sure there are things you can do to keep a battery warm, like insulating it with polystyrene?

[skir]

Well it all worked spot on tonight. Though it wasn't as cold by far as last night.

I guess polystyrene could be a possible for insulation. I need to do some searching for possible solutions I think.

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[skir]

Well I've worked out the problem was almost certainly not to do with the battery but because the clutches on the mount were slipping. After readjusting and tightening the clutches, no more problems.

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[faulksy]

glad you sorted it