SA-GTi Alignment and Slew Questions

[mikeofthenorth]

Hello!

 

I have a new Star Adventurer GTI that I am aiming to use for the eclipse, and after watching and reading many tutorials I am unable to replicate certain steps.  I am brand new to this so I am SURE I am missing something obvious and small, and would really appreciate any nudges in the right direction.  I had hoped to have this all worked out by now but I have two young kids and it is a constant battle to find the time!

 

I am able to get the tripod aligned north, and using a home-made bracket and PS Align Pro’s daytime polar alignment tool, I can get it aligned to Polaris with the dot right in the middle of the crosshairs.

 

I’m confused on next steps as things don’t work as I would expect:

 

- When I do a one star alignment to say, Venus, it go to a completely wrong place below the horizon.  The date and time on the app are correct and it shows a location, is there something that needs to be reset to home or something like that after I polar align before I go to something?

 

- The arrow buttons are unresponsive to manually slew.  I set it so the little number in the middle of the number pad is a 9, but no movement.  The app does work with the mount otherwise as it will goto, but arrows don’t do anything.

 

Also having a hard time determining which location to attach the counter-weight.  The manual shows the locations, but isn't clear on what the factors are to determine which one to use.  Does anyone know?

 

Just trying to get it to track the moon at the moment… seems like I should be very close, but I can’t figure out what rookie mistake I am making??

 

Thank you!

Mike

[Elp]

An EQ mount is a bit overkill for solar tracking as it's more complication than is necessary, but if it's all that you've got it's better than nothing.

Don't have that mount but usually your time has to be right in UTC format but it's not critical. Definitely cross reference check your location in longitude and latitude is correct, it will have to be edited when you travel and change observing sites.

Something to check ref goto going kamikaze, have you checked your home position or zero position is right, if correct it should return to scope on top of mount in line with mount pointing to the pole star so the CW shaft will be pointing to the ground (at an angle obviously depending on your latitude).

Location of CW, the manual should state about balancing your payload when in home position in RA (circling around pole star) and declination (east/west or left and right away from pole star). With your RA clutch unlocked (be careful the payload doesn't swing uncontrollably) the CW needs to be on a position on the shaft so when you slightly move the setup in RA it settles and doesn't move = balanced. You might find it difficult to determine but when you're at East or West heavy (90 degrees away from Polaris right or left) you'll see the balanced state better, if the scope moves toward the ground it is top heavy so the CW needs to move down, and the opposite if it's bottom heavy (CW needs to move up). Ref YT videos on balancing if unsure. Dec is slightly easier (do Ra and Dec balancing one at a time, then recheck Ra) as usually you just have to move the scope forward or backward depending on how long your dovetail bar is.

You have to make sure when it's tracking it's in the right mode. Sidereal is for when DSO imaging/tracking, solar and lunar normally come under their own specified sidereal mode/rate.

Edited March 29 by Elp

[mikeofthenorth]

Thank you @Elp for the reply!  This helped pushed me in the direction of FINALLY finding the "Reset Alignment" button in the app.  Makes sense that this could be the detail I am missing, I will try again tonight!

But yes, overkill is normal kill for me 🙂 I have been wanting to get a proper tracking mount to try my hand at photographing DSO and the eclipse has been a convenient push for me to take the plunge!

[Elp]

Are you using Synscan Pro app? If so reset alignment isn't anything to do with zero/home position. It resets any fine tuning of star alignment which can be done to improve goto accuracy.

[Elp]

If you are using Synscan Pro the home position might be the function under Utility > Advanced > Auto home, you'd have to look into it.

I'm normally using a computer controller so for me it's usually polar align, and that's it, the CC takes care of the rest.

[mikeofthenorth]

Yes using the Synscan Pro iOS app.  Utility -> Advanced -> Auto Home just says "Not Supported" so I had been stumped there earlier.  

[AstroNebulee]

Maybe worth a look in this thread. 

Lee

 

[mikeofthenorth]

An update, in case anyone else has this issue.  I found that downloading the SynScan Pro app on my MacBook Pro worked, I could manually slew.  Then I deleted and reinstalled my iOS app and it worked to manually control as well.

 

But then on the iOS app, as soon as I went to 1 star alignment it pointed at the complete wrong place again and the arrow buttons no longer worked to reposition it manually.  However, the app running on my MacBook Pro worked fine.  So I used my computer to manually align, set the alignment, and now it is good and tracking (whew).

 

Not sure if this is a bug between the app and the latest iOS but really strange...I've sent a message to SkyWatcher support about it to see if they have any insight.