Don't forget to align your finder scope!!

[DoctorD]

So, finally got a clear night when I'm at home to try out my new (to me) HEQ5 Synscan.

I used EQMAC, had checked the polar scope alignment during the day time and calibrated the polar scope with EQMAC, setup Stellarium and every thing seemed ready to go.

Polar alignment went OK despite stiff alt bolts and I loaded up my 102MAK F3.3 reducer and Lodestar ready for some near real time viewing with Lodestar live. 

Slewed to Vega and saw a bright star on the screen assumed it to be Vega - checked the finder and it was a bit out of alignment so I adjusted it. 

Centred the star and did a SYNC. 

Slewed to Arcturus - not quite in the centre of the finder so adjusted the position but still could not find a bright star on the screen.

To cut a long story short, I spent the best part of the evening trying to align the scope but the GOTOs were well off, in fact I could not find any DSOs!!

Eventually I thought I should check the finder scope alignment on a distant street lamp only to find it was way off. I aligned the scope and the finder scope, cleared the alignment data, re Synced on Vega and first slew took me straight to M51. 

Great - now for some real time viewing with my Lodestar....

At which point my laptop went flat

Morale of the story - Remember to check your finder scope alignment before trying to align your mount!!

Clear skies

Paul

[Martin Meredith]

Sorry to hear this Paul -- clear nights are precious! It's happened to me too once. I noticed when I asked for M82 and got M81 instead ;-)

Cheers

Martin 

[todd8137]

Common mistake made by many I have done this so many times of the years I usually have a check list on the obsy wall I should start to read it it hahah am sure this will not be the last or first time you do this

Pat

[DoctorD]

Hi

I do not think it would shave happened if I had been observing visually - much easier to put  wide field eyepiece in and know where you are, the limit field of view of the CCD makes it much harder to know where you are.

With hind sight, I should have realised that I needed much more exposure time to "see" the alignment stars than I should have - I'll remember next time, I hope!.

CS

Paul

[Ewan]

I think most on here would have done something similar one time or another, as my finder is used as a guider it cannot reach focus if i use an ep in it while setting up, i have to pull most of the ep out of the holder to get focus, after my first alignment star i then make sure the star is centered in the cross hair ep & the finder then im good to go.

[Tinker1947]

I gave up on the finder scope on my C11, put a Telrad on there and slewing and syncing are where i expect it to be, the Telrad has the target dead centre.....

[kingboya]

I too am through with the optical view finder of my C11. I use a Baader Sky surfer V on my deep sky rig, but thought that I would try the optical for my planetary one. Nightmare. Trying to centre Mars on the chip of my ccd camera with powermate was always going to be tough, but the new skysurfer V is excellent. Even after removing it from the OTA, it holds its position spot on! (Also, I found it very hard to see the cross hairs in the celestron 8x50 finder. <br />

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Expect to see it on ABS very shortly!