Help - CG5 GT choosing wrong claibration stars

[RobertI]

Hi all,

Had a glitch last night with the setup of my CG5 GT; chose a two star alignment on Vega and Mizar (west of meridian) then elected to do a one star calibration - the system should have presented a list claibration of stars to the East of the Meridian to choose from (as it has done before) but last night it presented a list of claibration stars to the West. As a result the Goto was not accurate enough for finding objects in the small Lodestar chip and I had to abort the session.

I was using NextRemote rather than the handset, but it has been fine before.

Any idea what's going on or what I did wrong?

Thanks

Rob

[ronin]

Vega and Mizar I would have thought a bit too close to the Meridian, very little East-West variation.

What time was all this happening ?

Why should it have chosen a calibration star to the East?

Post appears to read that with it picking a calibration star in the West you stopped - did  you not just centre the Western calibration star and continue?

The mount is based on the Synta items and these have a data base of stars with montns associated, the date may just have meant that a calibration star in the West was selected. Will say that some of the stars selected for alignment are a bit minor compared to others. One alignment picked a minor star in Leo, whereas Regulas or Denebola both in Leo would have been easier and better. So the selection process is or can be questionable.

Was the calibration star part of the process of going to a close by bright star near a faint object?

If so did you get the faint object name/designation right.

Messiers are easy to get a digit wrong, well on my handset they are.

[RobertI]

Thanks Ronin,

To answer your questions:

This all happened at around 11pm, according to Sky Safari both Vega abd Mizar were about 30 degrees from meridian

I thought the calibration stars were to remove cone error and were therefore on the other side of the meridian (ie: east) to the alignment stars - I'm sure this is what it has done previously (unless I am going bonkers which is possible)

I was thrown a bit with the calibration stars to be honest but from memory ithink i selected Vega again.

This was all part of the initial alignment at the beginning of the session.

Rob

[Northern Soul man]

Hi Rob, not too sure mate but (going off memory here) when you choose your calib stars you can choose which area of sky you want to align on East, West, South, North by (I think) hitting the menu button on the HC will give you a little E,W,S and N on the right side of the screen, so once selected the mount will only select stars from your chosen quadrant in the sky making the alignment more accurate.

As said going off memory, but I think you can as I done this only to find calib stars listed in the "wrong" part of the sky, so went and checked in the Manual - I'll have a look in a short while, but I think its how the stars are selected.

Paul.

EDIT - Hi Rob, just found it on Page 20 in the Manual under Two Star Align in section 1 - 4th bullet point down.

[RobertI]

EDIT - Hi Rob, just found it on Page 20 in the Manual under Two Star Align in section 1 - 4th bullet point down.

Hi Paul, Many thanks for doing that research and confirming how this works. As a result I have had a play with both NexRemote and the handset to familiarise myself with this. It seems both NexRemote and the handset remember the last E or W settings for aligment and calibration. Currently my handset (correctly) defaults the alignment stars to W and the calibration stars to E. This must have been set by the previous owner and is what I became used to. I recently started to use NexRemote and this defaults to W for both alignment and calibration which I think this explains what I was seeing and is the result of my problem. I have now changed the default to E and W.

Thanks to you and the other posters for helping me sort this.

Rob

[Northern Soul man]

Hi Rob, Thanks a lot mate There's many a time I've had to go back to the manual just to check something - its a nightmare especially when your outside at the scope - as soon as you get anywhere near lights your dark adaptation goes out of the window.

Had a look at your website -very nice - you have some very nice kit there and the images are really good - just goes to show how well your capturing those faint Galaxies.

Nice 1 mate and regards.

Paul.

[RobertI]

Cheers Paul, that's the first comment I have ever had on ithe website so I am very chuffed! Makes it all worth while.

It's true what you say about it being a nightmare trying to sort problems while you are outside at the scope. Somehow i lose the ability to think logically through a problem when outside!

Rob