Help with HEQ5 Pro setup instruction

[ozboyz1]

Hi,

I feel really silly posting this question, but I was unable to work it out from the instruction.

On page 12, Orienting the Polar Scope Reticule (please see the attached the screen capture for the full instruction in the manual) ...

Once the setsrews was tighten in step 2, The RA Setting Circle does not move when I rotate the RA axis as per step 3, and I couldn't set it to 1h 0m. I needed to loosen the above setscrews again to complete step 3; but there was no instruction to do so. Am I doing something wrong here, or the Setting Circle indication in step 3 is located somewhere else?

Much appreciate if someone could point out my misunderstanding..

[Lodestar]

Hi Oz.

I don't have one myself as mine is a  strictly old school GEM but this looks useful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh5kipL1mPA

Hope that gets you sorted with that nice mount.

[wxsatuser]

This may help.

http://www.astro-baby.com/HEQ5/HEQ5-1.htm

[PhotoGav]

To be honest you don't really need to worry about the setting circles on the mount... The handset comes up with the position of Polaris once you have input all the time and date information. You can use that to turn the mount in RA to roughly the correct position, place polaris in the circle and then use the Polar Align routine a couple of times to refine the alignment.

What you do need to set correctly is the alignment of the Polar Scope Reticule within the polar scope so that it is perfectly centered. I think the manual describes how to do that...

Good luck.

[m37]

Start with part one of this video series and go through them all. They will walk you through it very, very nicely!

cheers

[ozboyz1]

Thank you all for your help :.... This is going test my patience 

[brantuk]

Oh dear - if that tests your patience, just wait till you're waiting for the weather to give you good views!

They should put a big warning on every new telescope box saying "Warning - this hobby requires a enormous amounts of patience" - or at least an advisory saying "Patience not included" lol.

[66mikeg]

IMHO the supplied instructions are worse than useless I used Astrobaby's instructions to line up the polar 'scope and "polar finder" free software to polar align the mount. Incidentally be careful which version of polar finder you download as some of them now contain viruses. I use the android phone app.

[ozboyz1]

Super Giant,

hhahhahhaahaaa, I think they should !!!!

Thank you all again for your advice .... more questions to come in future post   

[jambouk]

The RA setting circle on the HEQ5 is worse than useless; don't bother with the setting circle method with the HEQ5.

Get to grips with just polar aligning by looking up the polar scope. If you live very far north or find looking up the polar scope difficult, you could make (and i think you can even buy them now) a right angled adaptor to make viewing up the polar scope easier:

http://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/5751-right-angle-polar-scope-viewer/

Jd

[wxsatuser]

The only use I find for the circles is setting the mount manually back to the home position.

[jambouk]

On the AZEQ6 i use the setting circles to polar align; it's just the ones on the HEQ5 are not suitable for this.

Jd