Hi from Preston

[Darylg]

Hi all ,

I've just joined, hoping to get advice and learn more.

I have a Bresser 90s/500 sitting on a Skywatcher EQ3PRO, which I'm having a lot of problems with. I've had the mount about 10 years I think and never managed to get it anywhere near a goto. Last night I updated the handset firmware entered the info from the Synscan app and tried a 2 star alignment. First star Caph, it slewed round and pointed to the middle of the plough, tried Deneb, it went in the right direction, but pointed at the  middle of my  fence. No matter what I do it always seems to be 30 to 90 degrees out. Any suggestions while I've still got some hair?

[Cornelius Varley]

Hello and welcome to SGL. Problems usually are due to several factors. The first is entering the location, time and date in the wrong format. The coordinates for the centre of Preston are 002 42W, 53 47N, yours will be very similar to these. The date format should be mm/dd/yyyy, time in 24hhr format and for now DST is off. The starting location (known as home position) is important. The home position for the mount and telescope is the mount's counterweight bar pointing downwards and the telescope pointing at the north Celestial Pole.

[PeterCPC]

Hello and welcome.

[Cosmic Geoff]

You have to enter the data in the right format, and get the start position right (telescope on top, pointing to pole star, counterweight down).  When you start the alignment, the mount should slew approximately in the direction of the first alignment star.

And be reassured, it isn't just you, the Synscan software is badly designed and hard to use.

[Darylg]

Thanks for the replies, I've used the data from the Synscan app so am fairly certain what  I'm inputting is correct. This morning I did a mock alignment using Stellarium to find the location of Caph and Capella and it seemed to point in the correct direction, then asked for Polaris and it looked again to be right. At night it's a different story!

[rob_r]

Hi and welcome from over the river in Penwortham.

[gaz81]

Hello from Whittle-le-woods, Chorley!