First Time Setup With GPS

[Aussie Dave]

I'm hoping someone could shed some light on what I might be doing wrong or not doing on my first alignment setup. I need to work this out to start some better AP work.

I have the Celestron Nexstar 8i SCT with a GPS attachment.

Everything powers up fine, it does the auto level, it has the correct time and then askes for Sirius (the brightest star) as the first star. I align it in the center of the EP and press ENTER and Align and then as my second choise it askes for Rigel (brightest star in Orion, bottom right of the belt), I align it in the center of the EP press ENTER and then ALIGN. It then says align successful but it doesn't seem to track correctly, worse in fact if I didn't have it powered on.

I enter Orions nebular M42 and it slews quickly but when it stops it's not even close to it, maybe 7-8 degrees out.

Is there something I should also know or adjust for alignment setup?

[Stargazer33]

Is the date entered in the correct format? Celestron use the American format: MM/DD/YYYY. Just a thought!

[Aussie Dave]

I've been trying to get in to the menu, can't work it out. I can't actually go through any menu options yet.

[spaceman_spiff]

Does it work ok without the GPS attached?

[Aussie Dave]

Not sure, I haven't tried with out the GPS unit off yet.

What I did was switched over to manually entering the settings, time, date, location as best I could and it was better. I then pressed the Planets button and it has an up and down arrow on the screen but I can't go up or down with the arrow keys on the keypad, it just moves the scope? How do you change the planet selection?

I then tried the tour on the planet Jupiter, had a quick read and pressed Enter, it slewed and was way out still, so I just moved the whole scope/tripod to Jupiter, again a little better but still not perfect.

I'm getting there slowly with trial and error.

[gtis]

Hi

To scroll you use the number 6 and 9 if its the same has my evolution 6

Neil

[Aussie Dave]

Cheers, I'll try that next time. It's getting light outside 4:30am, eyes are sore and I was getting cold. Been out for hours.

The last thing I did, moving the entire scope to Jupiter I found wasn't too bad, still some slight drift. So I got my webcam out and captured some of Jupiter and Venus. Venus was still low in the Eastern sky and there was a lot of shimmer. Jupiter being higher in the sky now I could see the faint bands quite well and 4 moons, 1 very close to the edge of Jupter, I think coming out from behind it.

It was a job and a half controlling the scope controls with one hand and keeping the image on the webcam sensor, and with other hand adjusting capture setting and taking shots.

I'm pooped!

[brantuk]

Yup - on Celestron handsets the arrow keys control the scope. 6 and 9 are used as scroll up/down keys for the menus. My advice is hook up the GPS and give it ten mins to get data from satellites (while it cools down) then aligning it will be much easier. Hth

[Aussie Dave]

Thanks guys will try again maybe tomorrow night.

[Aussie Dave]

Well I tried again tonight to get a successful alignment with better results but still getting some slight drift. I must have tried about 7 or 8 times with 2 alignment stars, Aldebaran the giant red star/ eye of Tauras and Rigel the brightest blue star of Orion. The GPS location date and time are correct.  Each time I powered up the scope I left it to sit there before alignment for 5-10 minutes.

All alignments were successful it said. I then pressed the Planet button then Jupiter then Enter, it slews but it's nowhere close. One of the alignments was about 5 degrees below and to the right of Jupiter. One of the other alignments was way out. Instead of East it slewed to Sout South East and pointing slightly below the horizon.

Been out there for a couple of hours and now the clouds have rolled in for the night. I did get to see the Orion neb but that was it. I've packed it all up and called it a night.

The wonderful highs and lows of amature astronomy.