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SkyWatcher NEQ6 Park Position :: Is it possible to change it?


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Hi!

I am planning to construct a small roll-off roof observatory for my telescope rig. I've found that when parked in its default home position, the top end of the telescope is almost 6 feet above the floor. This means that:

  1. My construction cost would be a bit high since my observatory would need to be at least 6 feet tall.
  2. For some viewing angles (like when the OTA is near horizontal, the observatory walls and roof might block some areas of the sky.

However, I've seen some pictures on the internet where people have parked their scopes such that the RA axis is horizontally pointing to either East or West, and the Dec axis is also horizontally pointing to either North or South. This is great! It means that if I can park my scope in this position, my observatory would need to be only about 4 feet tall instead of six feet. It also means that once taken out of this parked position, almost all areas of the sky would be accessible to me.

The issue is that I'm not aware if it's possible to change the default parking position on the SkyWatcher NEQ6 Pro mount. I can manually slew the telescope to this horizontal parked position and then switch the mount off. However, this means that when powering the scope up the next time, I wouldn't be able to allow the scope to resume from its parked position.

Is there any way that I can change the default parking position for SkyWatcher NEQ6 Pro?

Thanks!

Asim Sohail

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EDIT: Here is how I connect my telescope to my PC. I use a Serial-2-USB cable to connect the hand controller to my PC. I set my hand controller to PC Direct mode and then use CDC and PHD to connect to the mount via ASCOM EQMOD. And I'm looking for a way to modify the default parking position so that whenever I want to park my mount via the hand controller or the EQMOD software interface, it should always park in the horizontal position (RA and Dec axis horizontal).

Edited by AweSIM
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Synscan has three options to park:

home position 

current position 

last saved park position 

so you can slew the mount to your preferred position, select park scope and choose current position from the menu, Synscan will save all your alignment etc. For future sessions just pick last saved position and the mount will park there. 
Obviously if you’re gonna move the mount that ain’t gonna work

Edited by Jiggy 67
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Hi Asim,

If you're using EQMOD then it's easy to define custom park positions.  See this link: 

I'm not sure what is possible with a SynScan handset as I've never used my NEQ6 with anything other than EQMOD.

Edit: Jiggy's post above answers the SynScan solution.

Edited by r3i
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3 minutes ago, Jiggy 67 said:

Synscan has three options to park:

home position 

current position 

last saved park position 

so you can slew the mount to your preferred position, select park scope and choose current position from the menu. For future sessions just pick last saved position and the mount will park there. 
Obviously if you’re gonna move the mount that ain’t gonna work

Hi @Jiggy 67! Thanks for the heads up! I'll look into it. Can you also advise if using the parking feature can help avoid the hassles of alignment? Up till now, I've always had to polar align and then align after setting the scope up. But if I make an observatory so that I don't have to tear down my setup after every night, can I somehow reuse the previous night's alignment? I know having a permanent setup will help me avoid the hassles of polar alignment. But what about star alignment?

Thanks!

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3 minutes ago, r3i said:

Hi Asim,

If you're using EQMOD then it's easy to define custom park positions.  See this link: 

I'm not sure what is possible with a SynScan handset as I've never used my NEQ6 with anything other than EQMOD.

Edit: Jiggy's post above answers the SynScan solution.

Hi @r3i! This is a very interesting video! It looks quite simple. I even had a go at it just now with the ASCOM simulator and it works! I'll test it out with my actual gear the next time I go out and report back (which may be a couple of days as I managed to injure my spine just recently carrying my gear back and forth between my house and the observation deck on my roof every night =( ). Thanks for sharing this! 😃

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Yes you can. Any of the above options will save all your star alignment and it does it really well too. I keep my mount out all through the winter(under a good cover) and rarely do a polar alignment or star alignment, I do it occasionally just to check and sometimes it may need a slight adjustment. Obviously this is dependent on nothing being moved

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1 minute ago, Jiggy 67 said:

Hence the reason I leave my gear out 😀

I wish I couldve done that. In Pakistan the sun is very hot I dont have anything to shade my telescope from the sun or rain. =(

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2 minutes ago, AweSIM said:

I wish I couldve done that. In Pakistan the sun is very hot I dont have anything to shade my telescope from the sun or rain. =(

Telegizmos 365 covers are designed to protect from rain etc......and sun, they have an inner layer to protect from sun

Edited by Jiggy 67
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7 minutes ago, Jiggy 67 said:

Telegizmos 365 covers are designed to protect from rain etc......and sun, they have an inner layer to protect from sun

Thank you so much for sharing this. I will try to order one for my scope asap. It looks really effective. I just hope they ship to Pakistan. 😃

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12 hours ago, Jiggy 67 said:

Telegizmos 365 covers are designed to protect from rain etc......and sun, they have an inner layer to protect from sun

+1 for Telegizmo.  I used to use one to cover my stuff outside before I built my observatory.

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