iOptron iEQ45 Pro question

[Radec]

Hi - I recently acquired an iOptron iEQ45 Pro and last night was the first attempt to use it in 'anger'.

I'm unable to see Polaris and so was intending to do an iterative polar alignment process, but first needed to set the finder scope properly. I selected 'Solar System Align' from the alignment menu and with the moon leering at my back, found the only object that was suggested was Mars. No amount of button pressing, back, re-do would show anything other than Mars, which was behind my house!

The manual suggests that pushing the SS Align menu function should show up a list of 9 objects to select from.

The GPS was fully on-side and showing the correct information, so has anybody any suggestions?

I'm assuming I'm doing something wrong here as usual! LOL

Thanks

Keith

[fwm891]

Quote

Keith, I suspect it was because you chose 'Solar System align' and mars was the only object above the horizon at that time. Why not one of the 'star' align routines?

From the manual: - 5.3. Alignment  This function is used for aligning the telescope to the celestial pole and to create a sky model to calibrate the mount’s GOTONOVA® functionality.  The hand controller provides two polar alignment methods. “Polar Align” uses a set of 2 bright stars for polar alignment providing a viable polar alignment approach for those who can’t see the pole...

Can you not align your finder scope in daylight - even on relatively close objects ( I use a tree top circa 300 yds away) it will put a star in a low power eyepiece allowing fine tuning of the finder?

Francis