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Newish member in Jersey C.I.

MEJC

By MEJC
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MEJC

MEJC

Posted
Posted

Hello Everyone.

First post and it is a problem unfortunately!

Last year I bought myself a Skywatcher Explorer 200p on an EQ5 and have had fun looking at planets, moon etc. I have just added a synscan goto upgrade to it as I thought (and I am sure it will when properly aligned) take the guess work out of finding some other interesting objects.

Well I got everything setup last night in the hope of touring the night skies. When in fact I never got further than the alignment of the synscan system to any stars. I logged the Long/Lat, date, time and time zone. One thing in was unable to do with accuracy as i could not see the stars in great detail, not sure why, was do the polar alignment but Polaris was reasonably close to the centre. (I think!) Anyway and I chose to do the 3 start alignment first of all and chose the first one offered to me which was Arcturus (I think it was up in the east near Saturn at the time). Anyway I struggled to find the star (not very bright) and centre it so I decided to start again and go for a brighter one, so I chose Capella in the west. This time the motor moved the scope in basically the opposite direction. I reset the synscan system (turned it off and after a breif pause on again) then tried a couple of times but with similar results.

Not the result i was hoping for (but maybe expecting as i thought it may not be plain sailing!)

Does anyone have any idea what I am doing wrong and could the polar alignment issue have such an effect.

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JamesM

JamesM

Posted
Posted

Hi and welcome to the forum. With regards to turning the system off and then back on again, I trust you requested the synscan system to return your scope back to the 'home' position before turning it off? When returning it back 'home' before turning the system back on, disengage the clutches on both axes and make the necessary directional adjustments to ensure that the scope is aligned with the mount facing north. Your synscan system is probably making the correct directional movements to your chosen alignment stars but of course in reality it doesn't know where it is actually pointing the scope - only relative to where the system thinks it is starting from.

One hint regarding alignment when your system is up and running and that is when the scope is positioned in the general direction of the first alignment star, (...it's always a little off on the first one) try positioning the scope on this first target by releasing the RA and Alt-azimuth and moving the scope manually rather than using the directional buttons on your synscan keypad - it makes for greater accuracy during the rest of the alignment process and through the course of the evening when selecting other objects. Hope that helps but you will get more responses on the help section as suggested above.

Clear skies and hope you enjoy the forum,

James

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MEJC

MEJC

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Dear all

thank you to all for your welcome. And a big thank you to JamesM who I believe has sorted my problem. I did not put the scope back to Home. Makes perfect sense now!

Thanks again and heres hoping for clear skies and warmer evenings

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MEJC

MEJC

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Posted

Dear all

thank you to all for your welcome. And a big thank you to JamesM who I believe has sorted my problem. I did not put the scope back to Home. Makes perfect sense now!

Thanks again and heres hoping for clear skies and warmer evenings

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