CEM60 Solar System Align

[iandh]

Hi,

Has anybody used the solar system align function on a CEM60?

Yesterday I was trying to align my CEM60 mount well enough to do some solar and lunar observing in the afternoon. I tried observing without anything more  than doing a single star align and accepting the coordinates that the scope slewed to. However, this was not good enough and the targets very quickly drifted out of FOV.

Then I thought that I would try Solar System align and use the Moon as the calibration object. However, I was only offered Mercury in the list of objects to align to.

From this, do I assume  that one only gets offered something that should be visible at the time, AND that one CAN'T align to the Moon?

Regards

Ian

[michael8554]

Do you need to do any sort of Alignment to observe the sun and moon ?

Just manually slew to them ?

Michael

[iandh]

Hi Michael,

Not if all you want is a quick glimpse but if you want to zoom in on a Sunspot and show a few people while telling the what they are looking at, it's best if the  Sun doesn't keep sliding out of view, which  therefore requires a reasonably accurate alignment I'm afraid.

Same goes for particular crater features on the Moon!

 

Regards

Ian

[michael8554]

"It's best if the  Sun doesn't keep sliding out of view, which  therefore requires a reasonably accurate alignment I'm afraid."

Star Alignment only allows GoTo's to be accurate.

After manually slewing to the Sun it will only move out of view if:

Polar Alignment is poor.

Not on Solar Tracking Rate.

RA has a large Periodic Error.

Michael

[newbie alert]

The moon is quite a large target to align on..

Quite agree with Micheal above

Star alignment is for pointing, if it drifts then pa needs addressing