Orion Sirius, Polar Alignment.

[Likwid]

Hello,

Last year, I bought a Star Adventurer and an ST80. By the end of the year, I had the polar alignment down and I was getting 90-120 second subs at 400mm pretty regularly. This year, I decided to upgrade to the Orion Sirius and ED80. My first night out, the alignment was MUCH different and I had horrible lines for stars at 15 seconds. Last night after watching a few videos, I was able to get 120 second subs at 600mm which is a huge improvement. I am only relying on the polar finder at this point. When I try to do the star alignment in the Go-To controller, it is pretty far off. I tried pointing to Alioth in the Big Dipper and it actually pointed straight up almost directly over Polaris (Basically around where it would be in a few hours). I went through and checked the my settings and everything seems to be fine. I have to be missing something, but I can't figure out what. I am in Rochester, NY so my Latitude and Longitude are 43.1566° N, 77.6088° W (From Google), I am GMT -5:00 and I am at about 150' Elevation. I entered the information directly from the Polar Finder app after confirming everything. Now, PolarFinder says -77 for my Latitude, so I entered it as it would be in Google. Date and time were confirmed many times as well.

Longitude: W 77.38

Latitude: N 43.13

Time Zone: -5:00 (From the instruction manual)

Can anyone figure out what I am doing wrong? Thanks in advance!

[mikeyj1]

OK, so in order of activity:

Level the mount

Do your polar alignment (new reticule circle I presume?)

Set the mount to home position (scope facing North, weights down) *

Turn on and enter the data for location and time

Select 2 star auto alignment and centre first with 25mm then 10mm or better the illuminated crosshair EP

should be good to go..

*My AZ EQ6GT needs to be reset after PA as the Dec needs to be rotated to see through the hole, and it remembers that position as 'home' unless restarted.  To get the Home position accurately, use a level to get the 90 deg position and then set the circles accurately on both RA and DEC so that you know its in the right starting position.

good luck 

Mike

PS: the -77 is correct for WEST, which you are.. unless you get to choose E/W in the setup?

[Buzzard75]

Make sure you have daylight savings time set as yes. Once we switched over this threw me off on my first session and I spent a good two hours trying to troubleshoot, completely overlooking this setting. After it said alignment complete, I was getting the same error in that I would tell it to go somewhere and it would be considerably off. As in, not even anywhere near my Telrad finder window off. Not saying this is your problem, just suggesting it.

[Likwid]

Mikeyj1: Interesting, thanks for the reply. So I did my polar alignment with everything on so the reticule would be illuminated. I already adjusted the finder so it does not shift as I rotate the mount. When I got Polaris in the circle, I just left it there and started the alignment procedure on the controller. I never even thought that it had to be in the home position. I will try to bring it to home next time and see if that works (I have the home positions marked and everything was perfectly level before I started last night).

Buzzard75: Thanks for the reply. I verified 3 times that my daylight savings time was correct. I went through the book a few times before I tried to do the alignment. Hopefully it was just me not seeing that the mount has to be home for the Go-To to function.