A very basic PHD2 question on mount pointing

[philipok]

hi all - hope you're staying safe and well in lockdown and enjoying the clear skies..

A very basic puzzle in PHD2 - I generally slew my meade lx200 by hand to choose a calibration star and to point the mount 0 Dec and near the meridian.  

My question is - PHD2 shows completely wrong figures for Dec and RA as my mount is not aligned via GOTO and my calibration looks way off.  Should mounts always be aligned electronically when connecting to PHD2?  Does it make any difference if PHD2 thinks the Dec is 70 degrees rather than what it really is?  I'm not a huge fan of slewing electronically, I much prefer by hand.

I've tried to find a way of entering my Dec and RA, but cannot figure it out.

thanks for any advice !

Philip

 

[knobby]

No expert but I think PHD needs to know where you're pointing roughly to calibrate successfully.

[ollypenrice]

Key question but we need to be clear: is your LX200 on a wedge?

Olly

[michael8554]

You can slew the mount with the handset without any sort of alignment. 

Ideally PHD2 likes to be Calibrated at Dec zero, then if the correct Dec can be read off the mount, it will compensate for different Dec's. 

But ST4 guiding setups often don't have a mount reading, so you have to Cal on the target, and again if you change targets, and the same every night. 

To enter RA and Dec, hold MODE for 3 secs, then GOTO, then enter coords. 

But that would be meaningless if you haven't done PA and star alignment. 

Michael 

 

 

 

[Merlin66]

Dependent on the mount, you can set an "Aux Mount" in PHD2 which then provides the feedback on the RA and Dec........

[philipok]

thanks very much everyone for weighing in - in answer to Olly - it's mounted on a wedge, pointed reasonably accurate north, although I want to use PHD to refine the pA

From what Michael said, I could 'fool' the mount by setting 0h 0m, 0dec, pressing GOTO (without alignment it would presumably go to some random part of the sky), then manually position it myself.  The ASCOM link woudl then communicate the false position to PHD2...

My reason for the post was that my calibration is getting the error message "too far from the Equator" - or words to that effect.. and failing the calibration.

I guess I could just bite the bullet and use the GOTO system...

[michael8554]

9 hours ago, Merlin66 said:

Dependent on the mount, you can set an "Aux Mount" in PHD2 which then provides the feedback on the RA and Dec........

He's already getting the feedback, but because he doesn't star align, it's wrong. 

So Cal near your target. 

Slew (not GoTo) to the nearest Meade Known Star, centre it, call up that star in the handset, press ENTER, you should then see the Bayer or whatever name for the star,  

DONT GoTo. 

Then SYNCH (press ENTER for 3 secs ) 

The mount and PHD2 will now think it's at those coords. 

Then Calibrate

Michael 

[philipok]

thanks Michael - that's a great idea , I'll give it a try 

philip