Finally - eq6 First Light and some issues

[marxy]

Hi everyone.

Well, It's been almost exactly 2 months of waiting fo this. I got my new eq6 pro at the start ov November, but work commitmens and mainly 8/8 clouds have kept it nice and warm inside my ouse

But,

yesterday he skies were looking clear so I set up my lightbride to cool and did the 3 trips into the house to get al the bits for this mount.

Trip 1 was tripod, powertank and counterweight

trip 2 - head

trip 3 - 80ed, manual and planisphere

I set up the tripod and put the head on it - I ca't see polaris from my house so I roughly plonked it north.

Next I powered everything up and attatched the scope. So far so good.

I then tried the alignment - starting with 2 star.

I input the date the american way (mmddyyyy), time was 2100 and timezone was -00 (I live in Mancheser, 2 degrees west)

The initial slews were Bad (with a capital B!). I'm talking 90 degees out in azimuth and 30 out in altitude!

Now I'm sure that this is human error.

I would like to have chosen Sirius seeing as it had just cleared my house and would be perfect to sync on, but I couldn't find it in the database!

Asked it to go to M42, it said it was below the horizon when it was plainly south and 45 ABOVE it!

Just a rant I'm afraid - it then clouded over after about 2 hours

Can anyone help with these alignment issues?

Thanks

Jay

[steppenwolf]

I roughly plonked it north.

How roughly? If you can't see Polaris (a common problem!) then you must use a magnetic compass as an absolute minimum and allow for magnetic variation.

Assuming that you entered everything correctly into you hand controller then an obvious culprit will be the PARK Position. It is CRITICAL that you start the mount in the PARK position or the star alignment will be way out!

The PARK Position is defined as:-

1. Weights pointing down (and this needs to be done very accurately).

2. Telescope pointing up and again this needs to be done very accurately.

[MikeP]

Been there Jay and had similar problems. Steppenwolf is spot on, it is to do with PARK.

You can try this indoors. Switch the mount on, go through the same date, time and location stuff again. Most of it will have been stored so you can just accept it. Then use PARK TO HOME POSITION - think it is on the Utility menu. Based on what you have said, the mount will probably point somewhere other than where Steppenwolf has described. Switch off the mount. Release the clutches and move the mount manually to the home position.

Now, switch on again and go through the start up dialogue. Assuming you are doing this indoors, try a "go to". The mount should slew to more or less the right position. When you have finished experimenting PARK the scope again and make sure you always do so at the end of each session, because as Steppenwolf says, the mount assumes its position (as it records it by the position of the gear wheels) is HOME i.e. pointing at the celestial pole from your location.

When you try outdoors, the degree to which the go to will work accurately is very much dependent on your polar alignment, so a rough and ready north will not put targets in the middle of the FOV. Doing the 1,2 or 3 star align will help a bit, but ultimately you'll need to learn to polar align using drift alignment if you can't see Polaris. I have the same problem.

HTH

Mike

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

But the M42 is below the horizon bit couldn't be anything to do with the park bit so I'll add my two penn'orth.

Stuff being in the wrong position has to be down to either setting your location, or setting the date and time. Make sure you get these done right (it should remember the location, but you'll have to tell it the time each time you power up).

Your location can be got from a sat-nav, Google Earth, or other mapping system (even those maps made from dead trees). The format is important for date and location so that the mount can work out where stuff is.

Kaptain Klevtsov

[marxy]

Thanks for all the help.

Well, I went through all the usual suspects :

date was mm/dd/yyyy

my timezone was set to -00 (I'm in manchester UK)

lat long was 53.4 north and 2.5 west (or something like that, I got it off google maps)

Time was accurate

When I set the scope to park it goes to the position where the counterweight shaft is pointing down and the top plate would point to polaris.

I would drift align but I was just having a quick peek beween couds so didn't ant to take half an hour to do i properly.

[ombos]

Hi, I'm just learning so my reply maybe stupid, but have you set the latitude on your mount to 53 degrees by adjusting the front/rear adjustment screws? and inputted NO to daylight saving time, although that would'nt make you that far off. I had a few probs but the advice from members soon sorted me.

Hope you sort it out quickly, Dave

[marxy]

Dave - I adjusted the screws so the scale shows about 53 (I've not done a drift alignment so it's still all a bit rough).

However, an 80ed with a 26mm 2" EP has a pretty wide FOV so the target should be SOMEWHERE in the vicinity.

Gonna try it again tonight and see

[George]

Did you make sure your mount was level?, mount head has a bubble level built in.

I used a plumb bob and spirit level to make sure mount is set perfectly for park, you can then set the circles to read zero or whatever and then use these in future if you need to manually park.