HEQ5 Pro 2 Star Alignment.

[Stuf1978]

I've just moved from a Star Adventurer to a used HEQ5 Pro mount and last night was the first time I have had the opportunity to set it up. I followed the manual on the initial set up (location, time, date etc.) Which seemed pretty straight forward. However, when performing the 2 star alignment using Vega and Deneb the mount was way off and I had to slew the mount quite a bit to get the stars centralised. 

Once I'd confirmed I had the stars centralised I used the go to function to find M31 and the Western Veil both of which were bang in the centre of my frame and the mount tracked them with no issue. 

Is it normal for a mount to be this far off from the alignment stars? 🤷‍♂️

[Tenor Viol]

You might have made a similar mistake to one I made initially with the HEQ5. It's unlikely because of the date last night of 29-08-2020 that you keyed that in wrong as that wouldn't work, but in a couple of days' time when we hit 01-09-2020 the date will need to be input as 09-01-2020 as it uses the US date format (which I find just peculiar, mind you I'm an IT guy and we almost always use yyyy-mm-dd).

The other is you might have put the time in incorrectly or responded incorrectly to the 'daylight saving time' query as that would throw you out by 15 degrees.

The other is you might not have set 'home' position correctly. 

[lenscap]

35 minutes ago, Stuf1978 said:

when performing the 2 star alignment using Vega and Deneb the mount was way off and I had to slew the mount quite a bit to get the stars centralised. 

How many degrees is "way off"?

A few degrees may be due to  slight errors when setting the home position.

Much more than that may be Settings errors. The longitude value for your location should be negative (West).

Your time zone should be zero even though we are on daylight saving at the moment.

 

Edited August 30, 2020 by lenscap

[Stuf1978]

11 minutes ago, Tenor Viol said:

You might have made a similar mistake to one I made initially with the HEQ5. It's unlikely because of the date last night of 29-08-2020 that you keyed that in wrong as that wouldn't work, but in a couple of days' time when we hit 01-09-2020 the date will need to be input as 09-01-2020 as it uses the US date format (which I find just peculiar, mind you I'm an IT guy and we almost always use yyyy-mm-dd).

The other is you might have put the time in incorrectly or responded incorrectly to the 'daylight saving time' query as that would throw you out by 15 degrees.

The other is you might not have set 'home' position correctly. 

Thanks, yeah I did notice the wacky date format so it wasn't that. I tried with both daylight savings options and I was confusing myself  and it was still off. 

The home position was set with the mount switched off, RA axis pointing at the pole along with the scope with counterweight bar in the lowest position. 

[Stuf1978]

3 minutes ago, lenscap said:

How many degrees is "way off"?

A few degrees may be due to  slight errors when setting the home position.

Much more than that may be Settings errors. The longitude value for your location should be negative.

Your time zone should be zero even though we are on daylight saving at the moment.

 

Yeah it was way more than a few degrees. Longitude was negative. Time zone could be it as I'm sure as I was on +1. Thanks 

[newbie alert]

If you're  confident that the time date, daylight saving and long/latitude is correct then the idea of star alignment is to tell the mount where it is so your goto's are correct..  it shouldn't be too far out but I've never had the first star where it should be, first time

[Stuf1978]

3 minutes ago, newbie alert said:

If you're  confident that the time date, daylight saving and long/latitude is correct then the idea of star alignment is to tell the mount where it is so your goto's are correct..  it shouldn't be too far out but I've never had the first star where it should be, first time

Yeah, to be honest it's the first time I've used it and I'll probably just need to get used to the nuances of using it. Like I said once I'd manually centred the stars the go to was flawless 👍 

[newbie alert]

2 minutes ago, Stuf1978 said:

Yeah, to be honest it's the first time I've used it and I'll probably just need to get used to the nuances of using it. Like I said once I'd manually centred the stars the go to was flawless 👍 

Sounds like you did it right

[Budgie1]

Did you Polar Align the mount before starting the 2 star alignment?  As that can thrown things off if you forget to do it in the rush to get set up,

It sounds more like the time zone setting though.

[Stuf1978]

12 hours ago, Budgie1 said:

Did you Polar Align the mount before starting the 2 star alignment?  As that can thrown things off if you forget to do it in the rush to get set up,

It sounds more like the time zone setting though.

Yeah polar aligned using sharpcap was the first thing I did 👍

[Tenor Viol]

Just to confirm for UK the time zone is 0:00, but at the moment 'daylight saving time' is Y. You'll be out by 15 degrees or more if one or the other is wrong

[Cornelius Varley]

And your location coordinates should be similar to 001 23W  54 54N

Latitude and longitude of a point

The app Synscaninit2 will give you time, date, coordinates and position of Polaris in the correct format for your mount.

[Stuf1978]

Thanks all, that Synscaninit 2 app looks great and may clear things up. Just need another cloudless night to try it out 👍