HEQ5 Pro trouble

[twelly27]

Hi all

The other night i manged to get my new HEQ5 pro aligned and working for the first time but i just want to check i did it right before i go out tonight, i put the polaris circle facing down put polaris in the bigger circle or near it, then out my info into the handset which gives me the time of polaris which was 11 oclock, i put polaris onto 11 oclock on the bigger outer circle in the polar scope then put my mount back into the home position, and did a 2 star alignment is that the correct way to do it? because i wanted to take pics of m31, when i searched for it on the hand set and pressed the button to start slewing it flashed up below horizon, is this because of my alignment or because of the information i put into the handset such as long and latitude? any info would be helpful for tonight

Thanks

Chris

[Ant]

The most common issue is the entering the day wrong, it has to be using the American format MM/DD/YY.

The sky for the 3rd July is very different to 7th march, could this explain your problems?

Cheers

Ant

[twelly27]

ive had that problem before, i think i most probably did it correctly after the first time it happen i felt so stupid that i double check it before i move on :/ but i can give it a check over tonight anyway thanks for your comment though

Cheers

Chris

[Ant]

Another possibility is that you've misidentified the alignment stars? Maybe try a one star alignment, make sure you're 100% right about the star (I spent a whole night trying to find something and I was using Caster instead of Pollox and wondered why nothing worked) and see if that gets you any closer, if you polar alignment is ok then even a one star alignment should get you close.

What about longitude and latitude settings? From memory west is a negative number east is a positive one (but check on that).

Cheers

Ant

[twelly27]

Im actually thinking it could be long and latitude on my other mount they are the other way around, the same numbers but one set is on the left on my other mount and on my HEQ5 its on the right, because when i did move to alignment i had stars to choose from the were not in the sky at that time they were well below the horizon so ill swap them round to match my other mount.

Cheers

Chris

[Daniel-K]

if your just doing visual try just putting polaris in the middle of the x hairs more than accurate enough. if you want more precise PA then download polar finder http://www.polarfinder.com/

[twelly27]

if your just doing visual try just putting polaris in the middle of the x hairs more than accurate enough. if you want more precise PA then download polar finder http://www.polarfinder.com/

already have that haha its just the fact it would slew to m31 but would to things that were above it and around it i cant get my head around it