Stellarium on a bender

[OK Apricot]

Just been trying to use my EQ6-R with EQMOD and Stellarium for the first time this evening. I'd tested it a short while back to make sure everything was talking to each other and was happy enough. 

Went to slew to a target and it was miles of... Miles. Thought "of course I need to do an alignment". A bit of googling said to just manually centre a star using EQMOD then sync in stellarium. So I did that for three stars - Arcturus, Dubhe and Altair which have been suggested by the hand controller on recent nights. All three were miles out, and even after syncing, going back to one of the sync'd stars was... Miles out. What gives? Mount polar aligned, location date and time correct on stellarium? I mean look at this screenshot - it thinks M81 is here... 

 

A bit confused really. Wanted to get aligned so that I could try out my guiding setup. 

[michael8554]

I'd have thought that first you do a star alignment of the mount.

Then centre a star, and then synch Stellarium to that position.

Are the PC, mount, and Stellarium date and time the same ?

Michael

 

[OK Apricot]

Date time and location were all correct. I couldn't figure out how to do an actual alignment in stellarium but thought that syncing the mount to a few bright stars once framed would've done the job. 

I've binned stellarium in favour of NINA now so going to be able to get outside testing and getting familiar with plate solving. I've also purchased SharpCap Pro to make sure I've got a good polar alignment. 

[Clarkey]

I have used stellarium without issue. If the mount starts in the home position it is normally approximately right for the first slew. I think the alignment positions are held in EQMOD when synched. As more stars are synched it gets more accurate (normally). Maybe the data is not clearing from EQMOD? Do you shut your PC / Stellarium down between uses?

[OK Apricot]

I do shut it down between each use - I suppose this is clearing any memory or something? It was a PITA anyway trying to centre the object using trial and error, and plate solving will come into it at some point so why not now 🙂. NINA and SharpCap going forward 👍

[david_taurus83]

Cartes du Ciel works much better with your mount. Yes, it looks a bit Windows 90's but it works great. Stellarium looks pretty, but myself personally, I can't get on with the user interface.

[Starflyer]

Your pointing model will change slightly every night and drift further and further out, so you need to clear out the syncs in EQMOD every session otherwise you'll get the behaviour you're seeing.  You do this in the Alignment/Sync section, btw if you move to platesolving you'll need to change Append on Sync to Dialogue Based.

Let us know how you get on.

[Swoop1]

A second vote for CdC. I couldn't get Stallarium to work with my HEQ5PRO at all. CdC works every time (though my input degrades the accuracy!).