nexstar 6SE problems

[steviebee]

Set up my new Nexstar 6SE for only the second time in the 3 weeks l have owned it. l have very limited views but can see Jupiter and Saturn clearly. scope and Telrad had been set up in daylight so should be good. So l did the Solar align. Lined up the Telrad and pressed enter then tried to slew to get Jupiter in the eyepiece and it did not slew. Only way l could get it to slew was to turn it off then on again. On one occasion it was jumpy while slewing. So decide to line up manually on Jupiter and could not get it to focus. Tried different eyepieces 25 and 40mm just a white blob in the centre. Neither the scope or eyepieces had dewed up. First time l used it was manually i.e slewed in the hand set not using align and it was perfect. l will try again in daylight and if no joy back it goes. Any suggestions? It has not been knocked or dropped. 

[Kimboman]

Hi I had problems when I first had my Celestron 6se.

set up your latitude and longitude, make sure you set them to north ,then follow the prompts on the hand set date ( American version month day year) set the time ,daylight saving and universal time .

If you select solar system press enter then the object ie Jupiter, manually slew to Jupiter get the image in the scope and press enter then use the handset to centre Jupiter then press align you should be good to go tracking should be set.

A good tip is to ensure that the telescope is set to level use the bubble supplied to do this tracking should be sidereal remember when set up the handset controls reverse you can alter this .

A good purchase is the book by Micheal Swanson "the nexstar users guide" persevere it will become a doddle

[Cosmic Geoff]

A little patience before you send it back. I doubt very much that the mount is at fault. Solar System alighn should be a doddle if you enter the right parameters.

If the focus is out, several turns of the focus knob may be required to get it in focus.  If you see a 'donut', the trick is to wind the knob till the donut shrinks to a dot.  If you have a dot, that's nearly as good as it will get, and if it is not sharp, the atmospheric conditions may be to blame.

Two more tips: Get a  proper +12v power pack and don't rely on the internal battery.  Buy or make a dew shield - it is a required accessory.

[steviebee]

Thanks for the replies. I use a skywatcher power pack which was fully charged. Also the proper celestron dew shield was used and l left it plenty of time to cool down and it was leveled up. The GPS unit was connected and reading right. I done the first slew to line the finder up with Jupiter pressed enter. Used the controller to slew to line the eyepiece up and it did not move. Also forgot to say the bottom line on the hand set was just a bunch of letters nothing readable. Update. l have just checked the focus in day light. lt was so far out it made my wrist ache winding it in lol. How the heck that happened Heaven knows as l am the only one allowed to touch the scope.  So thats sorted. Now it is getting the alignment sorted. l do have the 6SE's big brother the CPC800 and have no problems with just using the Solar align, mind you that is in France. l am sure it is just human error but what l did not understand is why it would not slew to line up the eyepiece after l did the finder and pressed enter. Even though it would not slew to line the eyepiece up l pressed align anyway and sent it to M31 and the scope headed off in the right direction although l probably would not have been able to see it in a 10" as l have Bortle 7 skies. l will persevere tonight weather permitting. Wont give up on it yet as l had a good session with it last week even though l only used it manually on Jupiter and Saturn. Also just using the controller to manually move the scope last night was OK but no focus. l will get it sorted especially with the help from this forum. Thanks again.

Edited September 30, 2021 by steviebee

[michael8554]

1 hour ago, steviebee said:

why it would not slew to line up the eyepiece after l did the finder and pressed enter.

If I've understood that correctly, that's in the wrong order:

GoTo Jupiter.

Centre in the eyepiece.

Enter.

THEN align the Finder.

Check Jupiter is still centred in the eyepiece and Finder.

Michael

[doublevodka]

By the symptoms described I'd be almost certain it was power related, what are you running it from?

[oscar_camilleri]

This sounds like you might need to fine tune the backlash settings . I have the the an 8se.  My Allignment procedure is as follows

You can do this part during the day or at night using a star.  Make sure the scope , finder and telrad are all aligned.

 

I prefer to use the auto two star alignment as i find it more accurate.  I select polaris as my first star - locate through the telrad and finder and center in the eyepiece hit enter.  Then i change to either a high power eye piece or a reticule eyepiece , center the star again and hit align.  Once polaris is done i do the same again with acturus or capella.  If im correct with your mount its important that the final two movements to align the star are Down and Right , this mimics the movement the scope takes when performing its final goto functions so it prevents backlash errors.  Therefore if you off shoot the center when aligning, put the star back in the top left corner and start doing down and right movements to center it.  

Now if you mount is slow to respond when changing directions from left to right or up to down, it means that you need to fine tune the backlash settings. Go to menu - Scope Setup - Anti backlash settings - You should have 4 settings alt + alt - Azm + & Azm - . Set all of them to 20 . Then put the slew speed to 5 and hit left until the scope starts moving , stop and now press right . If there is a pause for example 2 or 3 seconds before the scope starts moving , increase the value of the azm+ by 5 , if the scope is jumping decrease the value by 5. Keep increasing or decreasing the value until there is hardly any pause when changing from left to right.  once its all done repeat the same process from right to left, up to down & down to up.

 

 

[steviebee]

6 hours ago, michael8554 said:

If I've understood that correctly, that's in the wrong order:

GoTo Jupiter.

Centre in the eyepiece.

Enter.

THEN align the Finder.

Check Jupiter is still centred in the eyepiece and Finder.

Michael

I'm a donut. Thank you Michael for that l  misread the instructions. Must be my age lol. I wouldn't mind so much but l do the solar align on my CPC800 no problem. 

[steviebee]

Thanks everyone l think it may have been sorted. Human error lol.

[steviebee]

6 hours ago, michael8554 said:

If I've understood that correctly, that's in the wrong order:

GoTo Jupiter.

Centre in the eyepiece.

Enter.

THEN align the Finder.

Check Jupiter is still centred in the eyepiece and Finder.

Michael

Just re checked the procedure and it says finder first as l have been doing. lt is going to centre the object in this case Jupiter in the eyepiece that it wont slew. l need to get out and have another go unfortunately the clouds are saying no. Here is the instructions. Or perhaps l am reading it wrong? 

[oscar_camilleri]

23 minutes ago, steviebee said:

Just re checked the procedure and it says finder first as l have been doing. lt is going to centre the object in this case Jupiter in the eyepiece that it wont slew. l need to get out and have another go unfortunately the clouds are saying no. Here is the instructions. Or perhaps l am reading it wrong? 

The instructions are wrong. Ignore the finder scope bit. You can locate via the finder however also make sure the object is also visible in the eyepiece , than press enter. Then finetune the allingment to make sure the object is in the centre of the eyepiece and hit align 

[Starwatcher2001]

"Update. l have just checked the focus in day light. lt was so far out it made my wrist ache winding it in lol. How the heck that happened Heaven knows as l am the only one allowed to touch the scope.  So thats sorted."

Be aware that the focus on an SCT has a massive range of movement. On mine it can take me more than a minute or two to move from one end of the focus to the other and does make the hand ache. When I first went from one end to the other I thought it would never stop and I'd broken something.

So your focus may well not be sorted yet. If you're focusing on something relatively close (neighbours chimney pots for example) during the day, it will be very different to focusing on objects in the sky. Before you worry about alignment just move the scope to scope to somewhere with plenty of stars (or moon, jupiter), and play with the focus with your 25mm ep until you've got a nice sharp image, and stars like points rather than circles. Then trackle the other problems.

Hang in there, we've all been through similar 🙂

 

[Cosmic Geoff]

While the printed instructions could be better drafted, what they actually mean is : enter the required parameters, get the desired object somewhere in the eyepiece field, press ENTER, centre the object in the eyepiece field, press ALIGN.

Note that a CPC800 has negligible backlash, apparently because of spring-loaded worms etc, but a SE mount has quite a lot.

If the slew speed is accidentally set to a low rate, nothing will appear to be happening if you press the slew buttons.  The slew speed should initially default to a high rate, and then change to a lower rate for the final aligning on ENTER being pressed.

If you think Nexstar is hard to use, try getting a Skywatcher Synscan to work. 🙁

As mentioned above, there is a big change of focus between near terrestrial objects, and astro objects.

Edited October 1, 2021 by Cosmic Geoff

[michael8554]

On 30/09/2021 at 14:02, michael8554 said:

Centre in the eyepiece.

Enter.

THEN align the Finder.

Note the subtle wording.

I suggested you align the finder after centring Jupiter in the eyepiece.

If you had already aligned the Finder and Eyepiece views, then the scope instructions are correct.

Michael

 

 

Edited October 1, 2021 by michael8554

[steviebee]

22 hours ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

While the printed instructions could be better drafted, what they actually mean is : enter the required parameters, get the desired object somewhere in the eyepiece field, press ENTER, centre the object in the eyepiece field, press ALIGN.

Note that a CPC800 has negligible backlash, apparently because of spring-loaded worms etc, but a SE mount has quite a lot.

If the slew speed is accidentally set to a low rate, nothing will appear to be happening if you press the slew buttons.  The slew speed should initially default to a high rate, and then change to a lower rate for the final aligning on ENTER being pressed.

If you think Nexstar is hard to use, try getting a Skywatcher Synscan to work. 🙁

As mentioned above, there is a big change of focus between near terrestrial objects, and astro objects.

Thanks cosmic Geoff l will give that a go. O yes l know what you mean about Synscan. l had 2 scopes with it and just gave up lol.

[steviebee]

On 30/09/2021 at 21:28, oscar_camilleri said:

The instructions are wrong. Ignore the finder scope bit. You can locate via the finder however also make sure the object is also visible in the eyepiece , than press enter. Then finetune the allingment to make sure the object is in the centre of the eyepiece and hit align 

Thank you l will give that ago.

 

[steviebee]

On 30/09/2021 at 14:12, doublevodka said:

By the symptoms described I'd be almost certain it was power related, what are you running it from?

A fully charged Skywatcher power pack.

[doublevodka]

On 02/10/2021 at 09:00, steviebee said:

A fully charged Skywatcher power pack.

I completely missed that, will teach me for skim reading 🤦‍♂️

I believe most Nexstar handsets have a "Rate" button on the bottom right, if you haven't got this all working already and are still having issues with slewing it will be worth pressing that and then say 6 on the handset, you should definitely see some movement then, it could well be that the mount is defaulting to a very low slew speed such as 1, where you will hardly notice any movement

For any Nexstar related oddities I usually recommend taking a look at www.nexstarsite.com as there is some really useful info, certainly helped me out loads when starting off with my 4SE

[steviebee]

On 04/10/2021 at 08:06, doublevodka said:

I completely missed that, will teach me for skim reading 🤦‍♂️

I believe most Nexstar handsets have a "Rate" button on the bottom right, if you haven't got this all working already and are still having issues with slewing it will be worth pressing that and then say 6 on the handset, you should definitely see some movement then, it could well be that the mount is defaulting to a very low slew speed such as 1, where you will hardly notice any movement

For any Nexstar related oddities I usually recommend taking a look at www.nexstarsite.com as there is some really useful info, certainly helped me out loads when starting off with my 4SE

No problem. l have been unable to get out due to the weather but l asked the question on another site and 2 or 3 people said the instructions for Solar align were wrong. No chance tonight either as the sky is full of big Grey things and its threatening to rain.

[doublevodka]

15 hours ago, steviebee said:

No problem. l have been unable to get out due to the weather but l asked the question on another site and 2 or 3 people said the instructions for Solar align were wrong. No chance tonight either as the sky is full of big Grey things and its threatening to rain.

The astronomers curse! 

Have a look here - https://nexstarsite.com/AlignmentFAQ.htm and specifically here for Solar System Align - https://nexstarsite.com/AlignmentFAQ.htm  which may be a bit more helpful

 

 

[steviebee]

3 hours ago, doublevodka said:

The astronomers curse! 

Have a look here - https://nexstarsite.com/AlignmentFAQ.htm and specifically here for Solar System Align - https://nexstarsite.com/AlignmentFAQ.htm  which may be a bit more helpful

 

 

The solar align method you sent the link to is the method l have been using. Finder scope first them eyepiece, but posters on a Celestron site have said that is wrong and it is Eyepiece first. l have the CPC800 and l use solar align and always centre  the finder first. Totally confused now. 

[doublevodka]

22 minutes ago, steviebee said:

The solar align method you sent the link to is the method l have been using. Finder scope first them eyepiece, but posters on a Celestron site have said that is wrong and it is Eyepiece first. l have the CPC800 and l use solar align and always centre  the finder first. Totally confused now. 

I agree that step is slightly unnecessary, to keep it simple I do this (Assuming finder and scope are aligned first)

Power on mount

Choose solar system align

Enter date, time location etc

Choose the relevant object and enter

Using finder slew to said object

Center in eyepiece hit enter and align - job done 👍

 

If it starts to drift when using a higher powered eyepiece it can also be handy to realign, assuming you are on the same object

Press align

Then says replace object (or something along those lines) choose the relevant one and enter

Re-center in eyepiece, hit enter and align

 

Really hope the simple version helps, they can be a bit of a faff to start with, but really handy when you get the knack of it

 

If you want to be really ocd about it you could also go down the route of an illuminated crosshair eyepiece, but for my odd visual sessions the above works fine and if I'm doing more than just the planets I tend to use the 2 star align 

[steviebee]

Double vodka, thank you l will give that a go tonight. Looking good here at the moment but l can see a band of grey fluffy stuff heading my way lol.

[doublevodka]

7 minutes ago, steviebee said:

Double vodka, thank you l will give that a go tonight. Looking good here at the moment but l can see a band of grey fluffy stuff heading my way lol.

I vote for a rename, instead of astronomers we should be called cloud dodgers 🤣 Hopefully the fluffy grey things [removed word] off so you can give it a go, sadly living in Wales I spend more time cursing the clouds than observing 🌧

[steviebee]

5 hours ago, doublevodka said:

I vote for a rename, instead of astronomers we should be called cloud dodgers 🤣 Hopefully the fluffy grey things [removed word] off so you can give it a go, sadly living in Wales I spend more time cursing the clouds than observing 🌧

l managed about 45 mins before they rolled in. Did as you suggested and all seems to be OK. Thank you.