LX 90 planets not in eye piece

[S.A.M]

Hello SGL,

I have been having trouble with my Meade GOTO LX 90 (8 inch) telescope recently. 

The planets are not in my eye piece view while deep sky objects are?  I set up using the GPS method, tripod is level and three star alignment is good.  As I said, the planets & Moon are close but not in field of view, have to manually adjust to view them yet if I wish to do a Messier object it is there, maybe not dead centre but good enough to view!  I have taken the hand controller back off to see if a battery needed replacing, did not find one.  Does my hand controller need updating or is there another fix I could carry out?

Any suggestions would be most grateful as I cannot show anybody the planets if they wish to see them especially Uranus and Neptune.

Thank you for you time for looking and if you are able to answer this question?

Peter

[Geoff Barnes]

Sounds about right Peter. With my go-to Dob I find I almost always have to make manual adjustments to centre objects in the eyepiece after alignment.

Of course being in the southern hemisphere I don't have the polar star to align with, so guessing true north is more hit and miss here. Sometimes I get it spot on but usually I'm  just out.

Of course all the planet's appear much smaller than most of the deep sky objects, so it's harder to get them spot on, whereas nebulas or globulars are generally spread over a wider area of sky and so tend to appear in at least part of the eyepiece after searching.

The real  benefit of the go-to system is once you get your target object centred in the eyepiece it will stay there with tracking and many people can take turns viewing the object without adjustment.

I don't think you have anything wrong with your system, it's just how they are, good but not perfect.

[cletrac1922]

Peter

Better off using an external battery pack

I use car jump start battery, and gives more reliable power, then internal batteries in the LX90

We recently found with club LX90, the internal batteries had been neglected, due to everyone using external power pack, and terminals were corroded

John

 

 

[michael8554]

Hi Peter

Unlike the stars and DSO's, the positions of the moon and the planets are quite dynamic, what with retrograde motion and the like.

So unless you have recently loaded new ephemeris, their positions are whatever Meade loaded into the firmware many years ago.

Michael

[S.A.M]

Hi John,

I do use external battery pack similar to the one pictured, had a slight error a while ago and cannot use internal power now!

Peter

[S.A.M]

Hi Michael,

I guess I might have to see if there are new updates for my controller as i have not done one with it since I brought a few years ago at IAS?

Thanks for your reply.

Peter

[garryblueboy]

It may be the north alignment are you using true north or magnetic mine asks and this can throw off your GOTO slightly 

[michael8554]

The firmware for the LX9O Autostar 497 hasn't been updated for about 9 years.

And the firmware update procedure can be fraught, leading to bricking in the worst case.

To accurately goto the harder planets such as Uranus, goto and centre a major star nearby, then use the SYNCH command to localise the Autostar sky map.

Then a goto the planet should be accurate, or try a goto the ra and dec from an online search for recent position.

Michael 

[kippford]

Clock settings?

 

[S.A.M]

Hi Garry,

I manually align with Polaris and go to level north position before getting two other stars for alignment.

Peter

[S.A.M]

Hi Michael, 

I am not sure where the SYNCH command is, will need to look in maunal for that one?

Peter

[michael8554]

Unlike some brands, time and date setting on Meades is foolproof ?

Handset will show 20:15, or 8:15 PM, and 21 February 2019 - hard to get that wrong.

There's always Daylight Saving to wrestle with though......

To SYNCH, centre the star, then press ENTER for 3 or 4 seconds.

Display shows PRESS ENTER TO SYNCH.

The inner planets can usually be visually centred, Uranus, Neptune etc are much more difficult to visually spot

Michael