Setting up goto

[Mel1969]

I have a celestron c8-sgt with goto on it. I am a little confused on the setup. Do I need to set the telescope on a certain star or direction to get a two star alignment?

[daymo]

If you need to set up on two stars , I usually pick southern skys and choose Sirius and aldebaran , you align it to to the first star manually, then the mount will slew to the second star you choose and you just fine tune it.

Sent from my HTC Sensation XL

[daymo]

If you need to set up on two stars , I usually pick southern skys and choose Sirius and aldebaran , you align it to to the first star manually, then the mount will slew to the second star you choose and you just fine tune it.

Sent from my HTC Sensation XL

this using a skywatcher goto I would imagine the celestron is pretty much the same...

Sent from my HTC Sensation XL

[LukeSkywatcher]

First off..............you need to enter the date in the American format of: mm:dd:yy

Then for a 2 star align..........................pick a bright star in any direction, and then another bright star as far away aspossible in another direction.

[skir]

I go through this process to get alignment.

Get the mount level, use a separate spirit level if your inbuilt one is set wonky from the factory.

Get the front single tripod leg pointing to north using a compass to line up. This will mean the hole with the cap on it in your mount will be pointing towards polaris.

If you have a polar scope in the mount use this to line up polaris more precisely. Otherwise don't worry as you should be OK for visual.

Add weights and scope and get the scope balanced.

Set the mount to the index point arrows stickers attached to the mount.

Power up the mount and put in my exact longitude/latitude.

Add in date in us format mm/dd/yy

Use atomic time website to get accurate time from an atomic clock.

Select a two star alignment and pick an easily identifiable, bright star. The mount will slew to that.

Use a telrad, followed by the finder and then the eye piece to centre the star.

Then select a second star preferably on the other side of the meridian and follow the same process as for the first star.

The handset will then ask if you want to add a calibration star, I normally add one and this gives good alignment I find.

Before I power down at the end of play I put the mount into hibernate mode this remembers the settings for next time and speeds things up on next setup. Just don't move the mount at all from the position you parked it in otherwise you'll have to realign again. Hth

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

[Mel1969]

Thanks thanks for all your help

[Mooney501]

It might seem a bit of a faf about, but its time well spent.

[JamesM]

Great set of instructions by Mooney501 but just wanted to add the importance of making sure that the finder and the Telrad are both aligned to the scope when you hit that first star - I'm being a little obvious here I know but some people assume that by fixing any finder to the scope that it is somehow automatically aligned.

Look forward to reading your future observation sessions!

Clear skies

James