stellarium scope and az eq 6 (oh no not another one!)

[Horwig]

This is driving me up the wall!

Mount powered down, point it at the pole, weights down, and switch on.

Chose mount, and connect in stellarium scope, then start stellarium, and the scope reticule shows up on the pole.

Confirm sync with control 3

manually slew the scope to a bright star near a target, stellarium shows the scope slewing, but ends up slightly offset.

Select the star and sync to it, stellarium scope does nothing, refuses to sync.

The error can be very small, I've manually slewed the mount to the target tonight, and used the telescope reticule in stellarium as a guide, and lo and behold, the target is dead centre of the chip!!

So what's up that Stellarium scope couldn't sync.

I'm confused as you can see.

Huw

[Horwig]

I think I can answer my own question. Don't de clutch and manually move the mount.

By moving the scope with EQascom, and then syncing it seems to work. But wasn't it the point of using encoders that you could manually move the mount?

Huw

[Starflyer]

Here's my workflow for using my AZ EQ6 with EQMOD / Stellarium.

Setup mount fairly level, polar align and put back in the home position

Turn on the power to the mount, open Stellarium Scope, click connect and open Stellarium

If you've successfully connected then EQMOD will open up, expand the EQMOD window and clear the previously saved alignment model

** I don't every sync on the pole from the home position, maybe this is what's going wrong for you **

I select a suitable first star in Stellarium, CTRL + 1 to slew to it, centre it in the finder then camera or eyepiece using a joypad or the EQMOD controls.  Do not use not the handset to move it if using EQMOD.  I've never had the need to release the clutches and manually move it, and I believe the encoders on this mount make this operation useless anyway.  The idea of releasing the clutches was to move the scope without EQMOD knowing about it, with the encoders EQMOD knows you've moved it.

Once you're centred CTRL + 3 and the mount should sync and the circle target in Stellarium should now be over your target star.  Repeat as necessary, if I have a very accurate home position and polar alignment then I find 1 star enough to hit a near by imaging target every time.  If I just 'plonk' the mount down then I may need 2 or 3 stars.

Hope this helps,

Ian

[chrisshillito]

Mount powered down, point it at the pole, weights down, and switch on.

Chose mount, and connect in stellarium scope, then start stellarium, and the scope reticule shows up on the pole.

Confirm sync with control 3

This initial step seems a bad idea to me - how do you know the mount/telescope is actually pointing at the pole when you perform this initial sync? The home position of the mount may not be accurate, the telesecope itself may not be perfectly orthogonal to the mount etc. You should only ever sync when you know for sure the telescope is pointing at the sync target.

Chris.

[Horwig]

Thanks Ian, yes, I was syncing on the pole, I'll give your method a go.

Huw