Meade 102 refractor, allignment issues.

[Admasta]

Hi,

first post here and hope you can all help and i apologize for lack of information i may give.

I brought a meade 102 refractor telescope back end of last year, never been able to align it once! i sent it in for repair and the handset was faulty and just recently got it back, and still, no luck with alignment.

Now, im 100% ive done my part in aligining it correctly. got it level and it slews to the object.. now, it doesnt centerise in the eyepiece and i move it to centerise with the star (this is two star alignment). it is always off center, East of my perspective. I believe this has something to do with my location, because i live in leicester and it doesnt bring my city up and my nearest is Birmingham which i feel is my only choice as you cannot manually enter my location, or can i?  - this would make sense with it being always to the east of the star, my perspective again? or am i wrong in thinking this... i could be completely wrong but any advice is much appreciated, i mean.. am i even supposed to move the scope to when its found a star because then everything will be off centered regardless?

i have gone into the longitude and latitude settings, my current settings of my location (leicester) are LATITUDE: 52.627830 LONGITUDE: -1.062143, my scopes longitude and latitude are set up as follows, 52.29 North and 1.54 West

I am a newbie into this and just struggling a bit to understand whats going on.

 

if you need me to supply any information i may have missed i will respond as fast as i can. being a clear night tonight and tomorrow id love to be able to crack this!

 

Thanks

 

Adam

[101nut]

Off the top of my head, is it not utilities -> site -> add to add a new site? Or enter a site then edit the site from the same utility menu? 

AndyG

[Admasta]

thanks for the reply,

the trouble is, there isnt a site for leicester of which is where i am located.

[ronin]

When you go to the Site > Add you are asked for a "location" what it wants is a short text string  - try LEI (Enter). Bit of a pain to enter from the handset.

Then you supply the Latitude = 52  19N (Enter) , then the Longitude = 1  30W or -1  30 (Enter) (cannot recall the format as in +/- or E/W). Then you give the Timezone which for us is 0 (Enter) (may be -0 for some reason). After the Enter for the Timezone (or what is last) the data is in, you can then press Mode to return up the menu tree.

That is the custom location entered, and if I recall the scope will use this until you either change the values or pick another or hit reset. There is no Save option it just gets input when you press Enter- I usually end up going round in circles at this point as it gets back to wanting the location text string. Also it may start asking for the time, ignore it - you do not need to enter time until you use the scope. Will say it is not exactly clear that everything has gone in

Make sure the Level and North is done fairly well.

[Admasta]

Ok, so followed your advice and i was able to input LEI and the LAT and L/Tude - it was still unable to find the stars, it was still way left of the star, when checking the longitude and latitude on google with a finder to my point it comes up with LAT 52.63 and LTUDE -1.13 which is slightly different to what you have specified?

I may have entered the longitude incorrectly as i didnt use the ( - ) and also comes in the format (to begin with) of 000.00, now do i enter it as 001.30? this may be where its gone wrong. looking like a clear sky tonight so shall have another go

[Cornelius Varley]

13 hours ago, Admasta said:

Ok, so followed your advice and i was able to input LEI and the LAT and L/Tude - it was still unable to find the stars, it was still way left of the star, when checking the longitude and latitude on google with a finder to my point it comes up with LAT 52.63 and LTUDE -1.13 which is slightly different to what you have specified?

I may have entered the longitude incorrectly as i didnt use the ( - ) and also comes in the format (to begin with) of 000.00, now do i enter it as 001.30? this may be where its gone wrong. looking like a clear sky tonight so shall have another go

Google maps will give your location in decimal format ie 52.63N 1.13W whereas the handset will need the coordinates in proper mapping units 52 38N, 001 08W. You can find your location using this site http://www.satsig.net/maps/lat-long-finder.htm which will give the coordinates in the correct degrees and minutes.

[ronin]

Usually websites etc supply Lat+Long in decimal, scopes use Degrees and Minutes. So 1.13 = 1 degree and 0.13*60 minutes ~ 1 degree 8 minutes. All I did  was pick what looked like the middle of Leicester as that was all the info I had.

Have an idea that the Meades use East or West, cannot be bothered to power mine up, so you would enter 001  08 W, check the number of leading 0's.

Check the timezone, as said I have the idea that it likes -0 not 0. Equally Meade may have sorted this and now -0 = 0.

How far Left?? As in about 15 degrees? If so have you said Yes to DST?

[spaceboy]

It is worth noting that it is a common misconception that goto with align an object dead centre in an eyepiece.  Even when you have your mount level, correct lat/long, successfully aligned 3 stars there will be some deviation when slewing and the object isn't going to slew dead centre every time. You should expect the object to be present in a low to medium magnification eyepiece or your finder field of view. If it is outside of that then you should have concerns.

[bruno]

After you have polar aligned, try one star alignment  on vega then goto a near object ( M57 ring nebula) Also use a wide angle lens, it should give you a good FOV for you to centre on.

Something else you could have a look at is wether your polarscope is aligned.

Sorry if this is vague but you don't say wether the mount is new or S/H or if you are  observing or Astrophotography