8se help.....

[keiwein1]

sooooo.... im trying to setup my nexstar 8se and i have set the time date and location exactly and stuff like that during my viewing session and every time i try to allighn it, it says allighnment failed. i have tried soooo many times! also how do i track solar system objects and stuff with the telescope?

[jambouk]

Are you entering the date in the correct format; often month; day; year.

Are you selecting british summer time / day light saving, assuming you are in the uk.

Are you entering the latitude and lonitide correctly?

Can you take a picture of each of these screens on the handset with what you have entered?

Are you slewing to the correct stars when doing a star aligent - do you know the stars it is suggesting in the alignment routine?

These problems are often user-related rather than faulty kit.

You will get it up and running perfectly very soon.

James

[keiwein1]

Are you entering the date in the correct format; often month; day; year.

Are you selecting british summer time / day light saving, assuming you are in the uk.

Are you entering the latitude and lonitide correctly?

Can you take a picture of each of these screens on the handset with what you have entered?

Are you slewing to the correct stars when doing a star aligent - do you know the stars it is suggesting in the alignment routine?

These problems are often user-related rather than faulty kit.

You will get it up and running perfectly very soon.

James

everything seems correct, i check it and calibrate it every night. i set it to eastern time which is were i live, do i need to set daylight savings time? i use the celestron software which i use three bright stars and i did it every time and it ussually takes me a while but i dont know how that makes a difference....

[jambouk]

If you are outside of the UK, you should have daylight saving turned off.

James

[keiwein1]

If you are outside of the UK, you should have daylight saving turned off.

James

ok thx ill try tonight to get everything set up

[jambouk]

You can do a mock run eeven when it's daytime. Enter date, coorrdinates and say

Itt is 9pm say. Then do a three star alignment; if the mount slews to the first star, just accept the position it augvests and the remaining two, if you have to slew to the first star, slew to roughly where it would be at that time oof night, then just accept the positions it suggests for the other two stars and if it still says alignment unsucesssful, there is something wrong.

James

[ronin]

Check the data out fully, at least twice and write each entry down to check.

You have DST at this time of the year so that will be Yes or On, the US changes DST about 2 weeks different to when we do, but at this time I would expect it to be applied.

Your Latitude should be 40^o  42' N

Longitude will be 73^o 45' W

These may well be entered as Longitude first - read what the handset requests, also Longitude may be 073^o 45' W  - check the number of leading zeros.

Your timezone is -5, usually this defaults to -8 (West Coast).

As said DST should be On for you at this time. I think there are just 2 states in the US that do not apply DST.

When you set it all up level everything - mount, scope and anything thing else - then aim the OTA North, may be a marker on a mount leg for N.

You may not need to do this 100% but in general it tends to help if for no other reason then you commence from a defined position for yourself.

The more level it all starts out the less tilt errors the scope needs to compensate for.

Sure I have missed something?

Use an eyepiece that gives a wide view and align finder to main scope as well before hand.

[Gazabone]

How accurately are you aligning your alignment stars? The more accurate you can do it, the better the alignment will be. If they are way out, then the mount won't be able to do its calculations to sort out where everything is.

I suspect it is to do with location and/or date and time settings. I occasionally get an alignment failed message and it's usually something I've done wrong.

I would suggest doing 2 or 3 "factory reset" before you next try alignment (it's on the menu button sequence). It's supposed to build up data to increase accuracy but if duff information has got in there, it might cause a problem....

Hope you get it sorted soon anyway.

[DSO Hunting Fun]

facing scope from behind. mount on left side.. if your using the one arm bandit.. 

failed sounds like this might be the issue..