az gti eq mode help please - Im losing my mind

[powerlord]

Ok, thought I knew what i was doing tonight, turned out I havn't a clue.

I tried to follow this, but it skips the most important bit.

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/658474-skywatcher-synscanaz-gti-alignment-instructions/

namely all it says is 'you have to do a 3 star alignment first'

ok.. how do I do that then ?? I mean what is the start position of the mount supposed to be ?? I've tried polaris and that ended up with my first star (rigel) pointing at the ground.. I tried changing it then to point at rigel, but the 2nd one was all over the place.

maybe these things are so obvious they are not mentioned but there aint obvious to me... arggg.

can someone just explain in numpty terms the process please.

assume I've leveled tripod, and toughly pointed the base at polaris.

from there - what position should mount be in ? what position should scope be in, etc ?

i will owe you forever - though already lost my chance at M42 tonight.

stu

[dannybgoode]

Polaris is a poor choice of stars. Assuming you are in EQ mode make sure you are polar aligned so the front leg of the tripod needs to be pointing north but also the mount needs to be angled so the parked telescope is pointing pretty much at Polaris. It can’t be horizontal like it is in AZ mode. 
 

Then it is just a matter of picking 3 bright stars you recognise. The mount from the park position will skew roughly to the first one then you manually adjust the mount using the arrows on the app, confirm. Rinse, repeat for the other two. 
 

Polaris is a bad choice as that is where the mount starts from so won’t really dial in any error correction. 
 

Does this video help?
 

 

Edited March 5, 2021 by dannybgoode

[david_taurus83]

Are you using a wedge? How have you polar aligned?

[powerlord]

So.. As I say.. Sometimes it's the things taken for granted... I'd polar aligned the alt axis... When I managed to eventually Google 'eq home' I see I'm supposed to polar align az axis.
Yes.. Stop laughing.

I'm now getting 30 sec subs as far as I can see.. Which is a damn site better than I ever got in az mode. Now trying to get california nebula.. Which is prob too dim, but its all I can see from current position.

 

[powerlord]

So.. had another go at 11pm. Though I had had a bottle of red by then.

I couldn't be bothered doing it properly. I put it in the correct home position pointing at polaris, then did a one star alignment on mars. didn't then do any polar align at all.

then went to NGC1499 california nebula as it was one I could see. Got about 70 shots at 30fps iso 800 with my canon 300mm F4 L.

Considering its mag 5.0, I hadn't done any polaralign, i did actuall get summit.

But it was very faint. Only way I could pull it out was to use Sirl to stretch the historgram, then process in affiniti photo. When I tried just stretching in affinity I couldn't do it (user lack of skills rather than afifnity help).

But if anyone fancies trying, I've attached the tif from DSS.dss_california.16.tiff

But even with that, its a heck of a lot better than i was getting in az/alt mode - I couldn't get 30 seconds there ever. So glad I did it, just need to get better at setting it all up.

[Adam J]

15 minutes ago, powerlord said:

So.. had another go at 11pm. Though I had had a bottle of red by then.

I couldn't be bothered doing it properly. I put it in the correct home position pointing at polaris, then did a one star alignment on mars. didn't then do any polar align at all.

then went to NGC1499 california nebula as it was one I could see. Got about 70 shots at 30fps iso 800 with my canon 300mm F4 L.

Considering its mag 5.0, I hadn't done any polaralign, i did actuall get summit.

But it was very faint. Only way I could pull it out was to use Sirl to stretch the historgram, then process in affiniti photo. When I tried just stretching in affinity I couldn't do it (user lack of skills rather than afifnity help).

But if anyone fancies trying, I've attached the tif from DSS.dss_california.16.tiff

But even with that, its a heck of a lot better than i was getting in az/alt mode - I couldn't get 30 seconds there ever. So glad I did it, just need to get better at setting it all up.

Sound like you are making progress, it will get better and easier every time from here on in.