Stellarium often gets my telescope postion wrong when I connect it

[RicRob65]

I am using a C11 on a NEQ6 mount. The polar alignment has been done using Polemaster and the telescope aligned using Starsense for Skywatcher - checking first that the telescope has picked up the correct date, time and location from my GPS. I have tried Starsense auto align as well as the manual align methods. When I subsequently connect the telescope to Stellarium, the software shows the mount as pointing in a completely different position to what it actually is. I have found that if I shutdown Stellarium, restart it and reconnect my telescope, Stellarium will sometimes show the telescope as pointing where it actually is, but it can take a few attempts of going round that cycle before that happens (I don't do anything on the mount between attempts). I am quite sure I have the latest Stellarium and Starsense software. Has anybody else experienced this and/or know how to fix it?

[Starwatcher2001]

I've never used that combination, so this is just guesswork. What's Stellarium running on, and is the date and time accurate on that platform (including DST)? Does the Stellarium also need to know the correct location, or does it take that from the scope?  The fact that it sometimes gets it right makes me wonder if it's an intermittant fault in the cable. After it finally gets it right, does it behave properly from then on? Is there a chance any clutches are slipping (got caught with that a couple of times on my C9.25)?

[M40]

I had a challenge recently where the reticule wasnt showing in the correct position. I found the eqmod software time/date was different to the Stellarium time/date; I think I have cured it by making sure they were the same but I am not 100% convinced as the two still show different i.e. stellarium still shows "j2000" date whereas eqmod shows current date. So it would be worth checking that the Stellarium telescope module configuration time date is the same as in your telescope software. HTH

[RicRob65]

17 hours ago, Starwatcher2001 said:

I've never used that combination, so this is just guesswork. What's Stellarium running on, and is the date and time accurate on that platform (including DST)? Does the Stellarium also need to know the correct location, or does it take that from the scope?  The fact that it sometimes gets it right makes me wonder if it's an intermittant fault in the cable. After it finally gets it right, does it behave properly from then on? Is there a chance any clutches are slipping (got caught with that a couple of times on my C9.25)?

Thanks for the reply starwatcher2001. Stellarium is running on a Windows 10 desktop in the Observatory warm room and it's data/time etc. are correct as is the location. I also wondered about the cable but I have tried more than 1 new cable. When it gets it right, it does seem to behave itself. I don't think the clutches were slipping, but I couldn't entirely rule that out.

[RicRob65]

17 hours ago, M40 said:

I had a challenge recently where the reticule wasnt showing in the correct position. I found the eqmod software time/date was different to the Stellarium time/date; I think I have cured it by making sure they were the same but I am not 100% convinced as the two still show different i.e. stellarium still shows "j2000" date whereas eqmod shows current date. So it would be worth checking that the Stellarium telescope module configuration time date is the same as in your telescope software. HTH

Thanks for the reply M40. I don't use EQMOD - Can you use it with Starsense for Skywatcher? I didn't think you could so I use the Ascom Celestron driver instead. I probably should have said that when it gets it wrong, Stellarium is way off where the scope is actaully pointing to. e.g. it can show the telescope below the horizon when in fact it is pointing to the celestial pole.