HEQ5 Pro Alignment Failure

[athornett]

s to align and says it is 45 degrees i

 

Hi All

I wonder if any of you can shed light on this issue I am experiencing. My mount is refusing to align "alignment failure" and is saying my position is 45 degrees out in RA.

However I have checked my location and date etc many times and all seems OK.

Clearly I am doing something wrong but for the life of me I can't work out what!

Andy

 

[athornett]

Hi All

I wonder if any of you can shed light on this issue I am experiencing. My mount is refusing to align "alignment failure" and is saying my position is 45 degrees out in RA.

However I have checked my location and date etc many times and all seems OK.

Clearly I am doing something wrong but for the life of me I can't work out what!

Andy

 

[PEMS]

Check Lat and Long values. The mount does if I recall have the input as Long then Lat, whereas we talk of Lat and Long and very often input therefore the 2 values the wrong way round.

The other is to check the Date, it is in US format of mm/dd/yy. However a recent date would mean a month greater the 12 which it should not accept. They do not say Error, they just sut there displaying the value that was entered but do nothing with it. So unless you see it the date may revert back to whatever the system defaults to.

I guess that you have set a custom location and so have set the timezone to UTC 0, I think it is entered as 0. The mount may default to a US timezone.

And if you have picked a location from the offered list then set a custom location. Means you cannot pick say Birmingham, and get Birmingham Alabama and not Birmingham UK.

[lux eterna]

Hi Andy,

Besides the date format pitfall, you have the possibility to mistake some other star for being Polaris (I have done both). But that would probably not generate such a huge error (45 degrees out in RA), just wanted to mention it. If the sky is dark, it can be tricky to identify Polaris in the polar scope. Another idea: Have you done the polar scope alignment procedure (very important) ?

Ragnar

[athornett]

Thanks for these thoughts. I haven't done the proper Polar Alignment procedure but have used reticle in polar finderscope to centralise Polaris so I doubt I am 45 degrees off! However I do need to learn how to do the polar alignment properly - but it is good enough to allow me to take 60 sec subs on recent images, including the Witch's Broom on Wednesday night.

One thought - does it matter how the puck is facing? I have presumed that it is OK as long as the telescope is facing towards Polaris when mount is turned on - but is this correct? Does puck need to face in particular direction? In particular, I recently changed to dual scope setup to accommodate a guiding scope and this means the mounting bar now lies horizontally (between scopes) across puck rather than vertically as it was with one scope (however this error in alignment did occur just BEFORE this switch as well as AFTER it).

Andy

[lux eterna]

The puck pointing position does not matter. But you should prepare the mount home position and also align the polar scope. Here is a good starting point.

Ragnar

[spillage]

If you have an android phone have a look at synscaninit. I will show you where polaris needs to be on the polar circle. As long as the lug on the puck is roughly facing polaris it will be fine. Too far out and you will not be able to make the need adjustments.

 

I think from memory it will also show the correct date format any possibly you co-ordinates but not 100%.

Edited October 18, 2019 by spillage

[lux eterna]

3 minutes ago, spillage said:

If you have an android phone have a look at synscaninit. I will show you where polaris needs to be on the polar circle. As long as the lug on the puck is roughly facing polaris it will be fine. Too far out and you will not be able to make the need adjustments.

The puck rotating position can be anywhere, what matters is that the main scope is pointing north. With a dual setup, the puck can be 90 degree off from north.

Ragnar

[JG777]

Don't forget to check your power, it is often the cause of alignment errors when the mount is not getting enough juice. The one I had would flash the red light at 11.7 v and start to misbehave.  

[spillage]

16 minutes ago, lux eterna said:

The puck rotating position can be anywhere, what matters is that the main scope is pointing north. With a dual setup, the puck can be 90 degree off from north.

my bad I had the mounting plate on the tripod in my head not the scope mounting puck.

[athornett]

Brilliant advice. Thanks all.

Andy

[athornett]

Looks like I have solved it but need clear night to confirm - by factory reset.

Andy