GPS for Exos 2 go-to mount.

[paul schofield]

Good evening fellow star gazers.

A bit of a long shot here, but thought I'd ask anyway. I own a Bresser Messier nt 203 reflector on exos 2 startracker equipped mount.

For some time now I have been looking for a GPS system to take the pain of set up away. As I never seem to be able to 1,2 or 3 star allign with any success or accuracy. I have contacted various dealers regarding this, no luck.

There are systems for other makes, Skywatcher, Orion etc. Would these be compatible with Bresser / Explore Scientific. 

I understand that not many people own Bresser telescopes but thought this will be my final attempt at gaining information. Regards Paul.

 

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[michael8554]

Hi Paul

A GPS dongle can be convenient if you're setting up at different locations all the time, but I'm not sure it will make your Star Alignment any better than the correct manual inputs.

If you always set up at home then Latitude and Longitude can be obtained from Google Maps and will be remembered by the mount, and only needs to be accurate to about a mile in any case.

Some mounts will require decimal figures, others deg/mm/ss 

Time from your smart phone should be close enough too.

But getting the time zone and BST settings wrong will mess up your alignment.

As will entering date as dd/mm/yyyy when mm/dd/yyyy is what the mount requires.

Michael

[paul schofield]

Thank you for your reply Michael. 

Yes all my settings seem to be correct, date time etc. I'm also almost perfectly polar aligned but still the mount won't play nicely. 

My next attempt I shall put London as my location as I'm only 15 miles away and the database only has a handful of UK cities. I have tried entering my exact coordinates during set up. Then even doing a one star allign on Rigel for example and the scope points somewhere approx 120 degrees in totally the wrong direction. 

Also my BST selection is correct. I will get there eventually. Hence the GPS search. Thanks again for your reply. 

Happy gazing.

[michael8554]

That sort of error is nearly always incorrect date setting.

London should be good enough.

Looking at the GoTo manual, examples of settings are:

Date      2020-26-02                          yyyy-dd-mm

Time     20-15-00                              hh-mm-ss

E013  25      and       N52  30            degrees minutes, so UK would be Wxxx  (three figures), and Nyy (two figures)

Time Zone E01                                 UK, either E00 or W00 are correct apparently !

Michael

[paul schofield]

Thank you again Michael. I will double double check when I next attempt set-up. To tell the truth, I have been trying for a month and am sure I must of got it right by now ☹️ 

I shall pay special attention to the date setting because as you say, this would cause the problem I keep experiencing. 

I appreciate your advice. Thanks Paul.