EQMod accuracy

[smr]

Hi,

Last night I attempted to use EQMod and Stellarium for the first time, it was nice to be able to use Stellarium to move my telescope and mount around but the accuracy wasn't brilliant so I'm wondering what I might be doing to contribute to that.

I've set the coordinates, degrees, minutes and seconds the same in EQMOD as in Stellarium, and system time is proper.... DST and London time zone etc.

I open EQMOD with the mount parked in the right position, or at least I think it's parked in the right position. I can see Polaris in the camera's live view display and it's centred in the middle of the display.

I then go to Stellarium, and click on a star, let's say Alkaid, and it slews over to it. The star isn't in the frame (430mm on crop) but it's not far out of the frame, so I use the slew controls and find it, centre it. And then press CTRL+3, and nothing happens. 

I then realised that in EQMOD if, under Alignment/Sync I set the User Interface to 'Dialog based' instead of 'Append on Sync' a little window comes up, telling me to click on a star, and once I centre it I click Accept and then sure enough the crosshair of the scope goes onto the star, effectively telling Stellarium that I am actually pointing my scope right towards the designated star. I then choose another star but it's a bit off, centre, choose another and it's pretty much central, and then slew to target... but the target isn't in the frame.

It's probably not far out of the frame but I was thinking that the go-to in EQMOD should be more accurate so I'm wondering why it isn't?

[jimjam11]

I get the same but with plate solving such as Astap I just run solve and sync near my target. The second slew is normally very close (within 1000 pixels or so at similar focal length to you).

[michael8554]

Programs external to the mount will only have accurate Goto if the mount has been well Star Aligned. 

They will not compensate for a poor star alignment. 

But in my experience, centering and synching on a star near the target should place the target in your FOV. 

Michael 

[bottletopburly]

You can choose stellarium via Apt as your planaterium program  , once you get platesolving setup  becomes a lot easier especially when you use goto++ feature which will put your target in centre within a few pixels .