Parking a NEQ6

[Tinker1947]

I'm in the process of building a small obby for the scope and mount, when the NEQ6 is set to the Park/Home position then the power turned off, when it is next used does it still keep the alignment that it had or is it just close, i'm thinking a 5mm EP with a star centred on GoTo still working after a fresh power-up.....

[dph1nm]

My HEQ5 is reasonably close, but not identical - I usually do a re-align. I suspect it depends on how accurately you set the time (which I never bother to do to better than 1min).

NigelM

[Tinker1947]

My HEQ5 is reasonably close, but not identical - I usually do a re-align. I suspect it depends on how accurately you set the time (which I never bother to do to better than 1min).

NigelM

Thanks for that, i will have a radio controlled clock with what they say is a very accurate clock down to 1 second, so fingers crossed and any thing else that might help...

[lukebl]

If your mount is permanently fixed on a pier and polar-aligned, and you're using EQMOD, then you don't need to park it at all. My obs roof is too low for my scope in the park position, so at the end of a session I just turn off the mount, slacken the RA and DEC and rotate the scope into a horizontal position so that I can close the roof. When I start up, I just manually point the scope to any old star (usually Altair at the moment), synch it in EQMOD / Carte du Ciel and, bingo, it's aligned and you can GOTO to whatever you want.

[Tinker1947]

If your mount is permanently fixed on a pier and polar-aligned, and you're using EQMOD, then you don't need to park it at all. My obs roof is too low for my scope in the park position, so at the end of a session I just turn off the mount, slacken the RA and DEC and rotate the scope into a horizontal position so that I can close the roof. When I start up, I just manually point the scope to any old star (usually Altair at the moment), synch it in EQMOD / Carte du Ciel and, bingo, it's aligned and you can GOTO to whatever you want.

The roof will be high enough to allow for using the Park position, it will be on a pier ect,,,,,getting Eqmod to work will be another trial in its self, but i have a PC with Vista installed so might get it working,,,,tried on a couple of 64 bit Windows 7 PC's and it failed....

[lukebl]

To be honest, even if my obs roof was tall enough, I still wouldn't bother to park the mount. It literally takes seconds to align it from scratch when starting up. Get EQMOD installed. It's worth the effort. It will change your life!

[r3i]

To be honest, even if my obs roof was tall enough, I still wouldn't bother to park the mount. It literally takes seconds to align it from scratch when starting up. Get EQMOD installed. It's worth the effort. It will change your life!

It will indeed change your life .

I tend to park my mount then at the beginning of the session just do a 1 star alignment, then go to my imaging target. I generally only point at one object each session.

Perhaps if you spend the evening looking at a lot of different targets, it might be worth building up a pointing model in EQMOD, then getting EQMOD to load the alignment points at the beginning of each session?

[JamesF]

You could even use a custom park position in EQMOD that leaves the scope out of the way of the roof.

James

[Tinker1947]

Well things change and one of them has been the scope i know use a C11 with the pier raised about 24" so it can't use the normal park position, i have clicked a few buttons in EQMOD and it now slews and parks side ways so the roof can be shut, how ever when i open the roof and unpark it and then pick a object to view it gets close but not right on it, so i do a couple of slews to stars to get it back on track and the GoTo working as it should, am i missing some thing having to do this every time i switch on and unpark ect......

[Gina]

You could even use a custom park position in EQMOD that leaves the scope out of the way of the roof.

James

That's what I do

[perfrej]

Just a small note:

If your clock is off by one minute, your slews will be off by 15 arc-minutes. That is WAY OFF! I try to get my mount time to within 50 msec.

per

[Tinker1947]

Just a small note:

If your clock is off by one minute, your slews will be off by 15 arc-minutes. That is WAY OFF! I try to get my mount time to within 50 msec.

per

The clock on  the rear wall is a radio frequency type checks the radio time signal every 2 hour accurate to less than a second........my slew error is between the middle and outer rings on the Telrad.....

[Tinker1947]

Just a small note:

If your clock is off by one minute, your slews will be off by 15 arc-minutes. That is WAY OFF! I try to get my mount time to within 50 msec.

per

Your repy got me thinking and while the clock on the wall is fine for the handset running EQMOD take the PC time, so here i am on the Obby PC and its is/was showing 15 seconds out with the proper time, used the internet time  clock to reset it it now shows the same time as the wall clock to the second.....nice blue sky out there about a hour and it will be dark, will report back later...