Tips on using the HEQ5 pro

[Tony89]

Hi,

I recently bought the HEQ5 pro mount and I'm struggling to use it. I thought it would have been abit user friendly ( maybe it is but I'm new to this tech) does anyone have any tips on how to do an alignment I'm in the southern hemisphere (sydney) would a 2 star alignment be enough? Or do I need to get it to the south celestial pole before anything? Any help would be awesome.

Cheers

Tony

[jambouk]

Hi Tony

Well done on getting a great mount.

It will all seem very foreign for a bit. That is normal. Have a good play with it all in the day time so youbget a bit more used to it, as it's awful trying to do these things for the forst time in the pitch dark.

The manual isn't the best, bit do read it twice.

What you need to do is:

Set it all up

Balance the scope in both axes

Polar align

Then do a star alignment (one, two or three)

Then you are good to go

Some people polar align before putting the scope on, but i feel this risks knocking things, but for basic visual you don't need bang on polar alignment.

There are three articles on the sky at night webaite on setting up an equatorial mount, have a read of them too:

http://m.skyatnightmagazine.com/feature/general-guide/equatorial-mounts-part-1

Are there any adtro groups near you? Getting someone to goover this stuff in person makes it all SO much easier.

Good luck and i hope it brings hours of enjoyment.

James

[damnut]

As James has said above really. There are some good tutorials on SGL & loads on YouTube. But do try setting up in daylight!!

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oXgtGQq-3V0

[carastro]

Polar alignment needs to be done first and the southern hemisphere will be more difficult than for us in the north - I am sure there will be some on-line tips on how to point your polar axis towards the South pole.

Makes sure your handset knows you are in the southern hemisphere, it should ask your location and you'll have to enter your co-ordinates make sure you put minus so it knows where you are, enter your date (use American format MM/DD/Year and then it will ask you if you want to align, and just choose a 2 star align the first time (until you get used to it).  

The alignment stars will be the brightest in the locatiion it is pointing at.  Centre then and press enter.  Once you have done both stars you should be good to GOTO.

HTH

Carole 

[brrttpaul]

I picked up a 2nd hand one today and been looking at youtube vids, I leveled both ways etc and then got stuck bigtime with the clock etc. The plan was to copy him as he went along but his mount was different (NEQ6) i think it was, Basically I got two setting type circles , one down by the eyepiece to polar align the other at the back where the bar comes out for the counterweight whereas the one on youtube was the other end i think. I will have to either join a club or keep my eye out for any meetings taking place and pick their brains. I,m one of those people that needs to be shown for it to sink in

[jambouk]

The setting circles are useless on the heq5, don't even bother trying to use them.

[brrttpaul]

Well what do you use then? would it be a bit like skyadventurer? all I do in that is look through the polar finder and look at an ap on my phone and turn the reticule untill it matches  what I see on my phone, I then adjust the lat/azi settings untill polaris is in the circle

[jambouk]

Paul, yes. Rotate the RA axis until the Polaris circle is roughly in the correct place, then centre polaris in it.

Alternatively, put the polaris circle at either the 6 o'clock or 12 o'clock position then Make your own hour marks on that rotating axis so you can "estimate" the hour angle.

The setting circles are meant to help with this, but they just don't work correctly and stick and rotate at will.

James

[brrttpaul]

I have spent all afternoon watching youtube vids looking at it as if it was written in Klingon. cant get my head round those setting circles at all. Thx for the help, no doubt I will be back with such questions like polar align, synscan  balance etc lol

[jambouk]

Where in the world are you paul? If you are nearish nottingham i'm happy to come over and help. Otherwise is there an astro group near you?

[brrttpaul]

Im in South Wales, I know they have observing meetings up at Blaenavon I will pop up there one night when they there. There is also Cardiff astronomy group so may join that, its finding the time after work is the problem. Thx for the offer though

[Owmuchonomy]

I picked up a 2nd hand one today and been looking at youtube vids, I leveled both ways etc and then got stuck bigtime with the clock etc. The plan was to copy him as he went along but his mount was different (NEQ6) i think it was, Basically I got two setting type circles , one down by the eyepiece to polar align the other at the back where the bar comes out for the counterweight whereas the one on youtube was the other end i think. I will have to either join a club or keep my eye out for any meetings taking place and pick their brains. I,m one of those people that needs to be shown for it to sink in

Hi Paul.  Attached is a document started by SGL member Ian Williams which I then modified quite a bit.  It may help you particularly A) to D).  Ignore the setting circles completely.  I used to work in Tredegar but no longer I'm afraid otherwise i'd pop over.

HEQ5 Setup - My Step by Step_clean.doc

[jambouk]

Very useful document there.

You'll likely have some friendly astronomers living near by, so defo worth joining a local group or two, or even starting a new thread in regional group section on here.

James

[Gazabone]

The setting circles are useless on the heq5, don't even bother trying to use them.

Got to disagree with you Jambouk. I use the setting circles on my EQ3-2 and NEQ6 and they work extremely well, neither have stuck on me yet and I find them as accurate as either of my goto set ups.

In fairness, I know some mounts do stick and perhaps I'm just lucky. Although I ve only recently got my EQ6 mount I chose the Syntrek version rather than synscan because I prefer the circles to goto and with the 6, the circles will never stick because you lock them down but the 3-2 (and I think 5) have to be unlocked (wonder why SW made them different like that?). The only gripe with the 6 is the RA circle does not move when skewing with the handset but that's not a problem really.

[jambouk]

The two heq5s i've played with had useless setting circles. Either they rotated freely when turning the axes, or would lock in place but at a certain amount of rotation of the axes the setting circle would then start moving. I've never encountered anyone who got heq5 setting circles to reliably do anything.

I love the setting circles in my azeq6 and use them every time i set up to pretty accurately polar align.

Hopefully the original poster does have an heq5 where the setting circles work, but i think the probability is low, but happy to be corrected.

James

[brrttpaul]

Yeah I bumped into a couple of guys a few months back and they were very knowledgeable and very helpful. I will have a good read of that document, once again thanks very much for your rapid responses you been great guys

[brrttpaul]

Just discovered another good tip for setting up the HEQ5 pro. When you buy a mount and scope and you are like a kid in the sweatshop waiting for clear skies, you spend all day in work glancing up at the bright blue sky hoping it will stay clear when you get home. Then the time comes you home, the sky is clear, like a kid on xmas day you unpack everything, read up on it work it all out in your head, you get in the garden start the procedure, closer ever closer to observing, level the mount, balance the scope , polar align.... Then and only then do you realise you have lent your extension lead to your son and he hasnt brought it back....... ARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH KIDS!!!

[Peje]

I look forward to getting where you are Paul, this topic will help me greatly as that's the mount I'll be ordering in a month or two.

Also good to see another D7100 user here!

[brrttpaul]

Probably the most stupidest question put on here but got to ask, in that document you put up above it says for visual use set long/lat exactly but for imaging it says set long 3.14W and 56N. Is that right? thought I would still be putting it exactly right? Also this " 

1. For imaging, leave the balance with a slight bias towards or away from the camera (depending upon drift in Dec mode) if im imaging do I go towards or away lol. Having a go at setting it up (yes I have got my extension lead back lol)

[Owmuchonomy]

Probably the most stupidest question put on here but got to ask, in that document you put up above it says for visual use set long/lat exactly but for imaging it says set long 3.14W and 56N. Is that right? thought I would still be putting it exactly right? Also this " 

• For imaging, leave the balance with a slight bias towards or away from the camera (depending upon drift in Dec mode) if im imaging do I go towards or away lol. Having a go at setting it up (yes I have got my extension lead back lol)

The document was modified by another user for his own coordinates. Obviously you should put your own location in whenever required.

In imaging runs it is good practice usually but not always to unbalance your scope set up slightly in both axes. This may reduce backlash oscillations.

[brrttpaul]

Well I did something wrong but still pretty much blown away, I tried star alignment etc and everything and thought I had done everything right but I obviously didnt as I put in Jupiter and it was in a wrong direction. So I manually adjusted the scope to view Jupiter, probably more luck than judgement but it was there bang in the middle, It also give me a chance to play with that autofocus , great worked a treat. Dont ask me what happened next but it said something like "identify" so pressed enter couple of seconds and it came back Jupiter, it also said off by 5 point something or other. I did wonder if there was a way to correct it but couldnt do it. All in all a complete mess but loved every damm minute of it, even contemplated saying [removed word] work and staying out there lol