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Why cant I align?!


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  • 2 weeks later...

I did my polar scope alignment today, and a fair bit of yesterday.

Probably the fiddliest thing I've ever done, and at times I felt like chucking the blumming thing away.  :mad:

I lost count of the number of times the reticle came loose and I had to remove the eyepiece and start again.

Eventually I tried Dion's trick with an 'O' ring under the eyepiece and it not only stopped the reticle popping out but also sort of stabilised it enough so that I was eventually able to centre it, the operative word being 'centre'.

I think the fresh approach today, and thinking about what I was trying to achieve, did the trick.

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I'd suggest not wasting clear evenings (which are precious) trying to sort it out and instead do it indoors which is easy enough if you have a mobile with GPS in it.  Download Stellarium or SkySafari app and set it to compass mode.  You can do a rough alignment to polaris using a compass for azimuth (you need to be careful not to get too close to the metal on the mount/tripod to affect the compass though) and hopefully altitude should be set anyway (this is not going to change unless you've moved a significant distance north or south).   Once you've gone through the Synscan initialisation routine don't bother with the star align and then slew to a star.  Check using your mobile app of choice with the compass mode that it's roughly pointing in the correct direction.  If the mount is roughly polar aligned you should be getting fairly close to the star (at least less than 10 degrees).  30 degrees off means you've got something pretty badly wrong perhaps the location coordinates?

Looking at your equipment you're setup for astrophotography, Have you connected the mount to a laptop/guiding?

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