Go to axis command on Celestron VX mount

[Bowman]

 Can anyone explain why the go to axis command on the above mount seems to go anywhere but the actual direction that you expect. For example,  if I put in an azimuth coordinate of 270° I would expect the mount to point West where as in practice it wandered off somewhere to the north. What am I doing wrong?  I know this is an equatorial mount but surely the handset should calculate the correct Altazimuth coordinates.

[Dr_Ju_ju]

I don't have a VX, but I'd hazard a guess of location & date\time settings...

[gonzostar]

I have this mount and i would go as suggested by Julian, also check if mount is level

[ronin]

Have you supplied all the required data? Guess Lat ~52.2, Long ~ -0.5, Timezone 0.

Then polar aligned the mount and then at power up supply Date and Time and DST,  then do the alignment of the scope for the goto.

Now the mount and scope should have an idea of where it is pointed and so where it needs to go to. You/it cannot go to 270 degrees unless it knows where it starts from.

If the mount is in EQ operation why would an Az value make sense to it? In EQ operation it wants an RA and a DEC. It could ba a case that you know what you mean, but the goto feature may not. I seriously doubt that the software will look at the value work out that it is an AZ and convert to a Dec. In effect if it is operation as an EQ mount it MUST have a meaningful Dec value supplied - otherwise if it gets a vlaue that is correct for either what does it do.

You will have to supply and perform the polar alignment and the goto alignment and I very much expect that the requested coordinate will need to be in the format/range valid for the mount operation.

[Bowman]

Thanks for your responses. The mount is polar aligned and all of the data entered correctly and is pointing accurately in normal equatorial use. However, because I want to photograph the ISS I need to be able to point it to the Altazimuth coordinates which I know the ISS is going to pass through over my location. According to the user manual the go to axis command allows you to put Altazimuth coordinates into the handset. Clearly there is more to this than the user manual indicates. I have also turned the tracking mode off so that the scope stays put at whichever direction its pointing. 

[SonnyE]

I'm a bit confused, and I've never tried what you are doing (Azimuth) with my AVX.

But in my primordial thinking, the AVX is an Equatorial mount, wouldn't it need more than an azimuth setting?

I was quite disappointed when I first began with my AVX as it did not seem to meet the advertisements hype. Over the last year and a half or so, I've come to like my mount much more.

If I may, I tried many times to spot the ISS, and I think I caught a glimpse once. (I have an ISS app on my phone as a hope of getting me to at least be turned in the correct direction.) I've never caught it in my Mount/Telescope. But one early morning last summer....

My wife suggested I try and photograph the Planets Aligned being plastered over the local media. That was when I found this amidst a slew of time-lapsed images: