skywatcher skyliner 400p with goto. Help Needed in Northampton.

[Tariq_Malik]

Hello All,

I am a newcomer to Stargazers lounge, I have a Skywatcher Skyliner 400p on a Dobsonian mount, it has a  Synscan with Goto. I have tried, and failed miserably, to set up the alignment for this scope. I am hoping that there is someone close by to where I live in Far Cotton, in Northampton, who could have a look at what I am doing wrong.

 

I aprreciate any and all support, so thank you all.

Thanks

Tariq

[dweller25]

Have you put the date in right ? it needs to be in the American format mm/dd/yyyy

[Tariq_Malik]

Yes, I have had my wife check it over, not that says much.

[ronin]

First question is what is the problem?

Is it data related or is it locating a star related?

Data is a problem as people "see" what they expect to see, so date is one where you "know" it is MM/DD/YY but still DD/MM/YY goes in, and of course it looks right - it is right to us. Lat and Long are another, Synta wants Longitude then Latitude but people think in Latitude and Longitude so still they input it the wrong way round. Longitude has a problem in that it has leading 0's.

What Timezone have you set? If you haven't then the scope generally defaults to Pacific Coast USA. Have you set a custom location, not one from the list. People in the UK have picked Birmingham, for the Midlands, unfortunately more then one has selected Birmingham, Alabama.

Are you not finding an alignment star, with a dobsonian you need to be able to find and centre a star manually. If you cannot manage this from day 1 then alignment will be a problem. Throw into this that the Skywatcher alignment stars can be faintish unknown ones.

If it is data and whatever is incorrect then often the best option is to reset the handset and get rid of everything.When the data goes in it seems that some internal values are determined and set and these (whatever they are) seem to remain even when you change data. In effect it rarely works right afterwards.