AZ EQ6 alignment issue.

[danccat]

Hey guys, had a great viewing session tonight and able to finally try out my new mount, hope the rest of you had some good viewings/photos.

I do require one bit of needed advice / suggestion, on a number of occasions the fov wouldn't pick up Jupiter and a few others on a 25mm ep, when, after hitting m42 bang on with a 12mm just before! This happened more than once, and never brought Jupiter within fov, I had to manually do it.

The mount is a Skywatcher AZ EQ6 GT, it's balance was fine and did the two start sky align quite quickly without concern and the coordinates are right.

Any ideas? If there a quick way to manually centre whatever us being viewed and align it centre from there?

[jambouk]

Have you released the clutches after doing you star alignment? If so, are the encoders turned on?

What is the focal length of your scope? The longer the focal length the bigger the impact of your goto accuracy will appear.

Do you have much cone error? If so you should be a)trying to reduce your cone error, and doing a three star alignment. If you just do a two star alignment and have significant cone error, then when you cross the meridian especially your goto accuracy may be poor.

Another issue may be mirror flop if you have an SCT or Mak, but less likely.

Is there much backlash in the system?

Manually moving to re-centre:

Yes you can do this.

Two ways: if the encoders are turned on you can release the clutches and swing the scope to where you want it pointed, then lock the clutches again, he encoders will make sure the goto system still knows where it is pointing; the other way is to use the handset, once the goto has taken you to where itnthinks the object is, press "2" (rate) and then "9" and use the four arrows to centre the object (if it is not too far out of the field of view use a slower rate such as 5 rather than 9), drop the rate even further to get it bang in the middle of the fov - remember to always finish with the same two arrow keys to make sure the gears are meshed in the same way (usually up and rigt arrows). What you can do then is to reducate the mount about where the ibject is, using PAE; how i do it is centre the object, press and release escape, press and hold eacape until it does doesthing, then select the object in question (it usually lists it as the first option) and then press enter again. This updates the mounts knowledge about that part of the sky - a better explanation will be in the manual.

Good luck.

James

[danccat]

Thank you for your detailed reply James, I'll be sure to give those a go when it's clear sky's next (propably a while knowing our weather here).

The scope is a Nexstar 8SE, focal length is 2,032mm. I'll do a three star alignment next, incase of cone error. I'll try the recentre suggestion as well. Couldn't get that to work, but I may have been doing it wrong.

Cheers

[johnpd]

1) Make sure you have upgraded to the latest firmware (v3.37). v3.35 had some pointing issues.

2) Alignment star selection can be an issue. Check the User Manual to see their recommendations. The hand controller may not give you optimum alignment stars. I know with v3.35, if I went along with the HC alignment star selections, I could be right on one object and off on others.

JohnD