CPC 800 GOTO Problems

[Northern Soul man]

Yes I know!! - the long and lat are ok, but I think the handset may remember last co - ordinates - I'm not too sure - but the date!! - I was out the other night and just scrolled through after I thought the "linking" was complete - it showed the correct day and month but 2004!! for the year - so I think using these "variables" would have been a nightmare!!

Paul.

[Planet X]

Well well well, it worked!  Set up this evening under a lovely clear dark sky.  We live in a village so we often have inky black skies and tonight was no different.  Used Sky Align tonight which needs you to align three objects and i have to say it performed admirably.  I used Rigel, Polaris and Jupiter.  My first Goto was Mizar and it had it pretty much in the center of the eyepiece.  I use an illuminated reticle eyepiece in the finder which is a Meade 9x60 and i also use an illuminated reticle eyepiece in th the scope,so centering is quite precise. I then did Goto's to Polaris, Castor,Rigel, Pleiades, Mizar again and then back to Jupiter which i photographed  with my cheap Panasonic Lumix compact camera.  I managed to get some reasonable detail including the great Red Spot and also Ganymede Io and Europa are visible in the pics, so pretty happy with that. The images are not that sharp but its a start and its something i could never manage with my old Newt.  I powererd down and then turned it back on tho see if Solar System Align would work,i used Jupiter and got a successful Align and then asked it to find Mizar and it did,then Polaris and then Pollux and bak to Jupiter, so all in all a good nights observing and the main thing,it seemed to work.  i found focusing nice and smooth now. I attached my new Baader Steeltrack with a William Optics 2 inch Dialectic diagonal and a Baader mk III zoom,the view of Jupiter was quite enthralling!  Fingers crossed for my next session.

[PeterCPC]

Good news. Hope it all goes well from now. 

Peter