CG-5 GT woes...

[arad85]

Set everything up last night for the first real use of the CG-5 GT with C9.25 and turned the power on, only to receive a "No response 17" from the hand controller. Hmm.. first clear night for many weeks, and then this

Googled for the error to find that it's the controller not being able to talk to the dec board. Darn it... Tried reflashing (as suggested on nexstarsite.com) still the 17 error.

Then a brainwave... try the controller off the Nexstar 6SE I have here. Plugged it in, and it booted fine, also controlling both the RA and dec motors (although clearly the software is incompatible between the alt-az and GE mounts). Reflashed the 6SE controller with the latest GE mount software and yippee... a working CG5-GT. That was absolutely brilliant as I could do a number of things I'd been waiting to look at/try (including a first unsuccessful attempt at imaging saturn with a webcam before it disappeared behind some trees at 22:40).

So.. just about to send a support mail to FLO (who I got the mount off in the first place) to see where from now. Guess I was lucky to have a "spare" handset around - two nights (assuming tonights will be clear) of moonless and cloudless skies would have been a nightmare to miss...

[gary1968]

Good tro hear you got to the bottom of the problem arad85..... :-)

Never heard of the hand control causing that fault before, usually the dec cable or the conections. Still, every day is a school day they say..........

Gary

[dweller25]

Well that's a bit frustrating !!

What happened with the imaging attempt ???

[arad85]

What happened with the imaging attempt ???

First time I'd tried to use the camera in the scope to be honest. It was just after dusk, so I guess I was looking through quite a column of warm air, plus I'm not sure the collimation was bang on (I hadn't had time to check it at that point - it certainly needed some adjust ment later on).

Unfortunately for me, Saturn is vanishing earlier and earlier now. I get about 30 minutes of it at the moment, which when it takes 10 minutes to align the scope, leaves next to no time

See attached for the registax image I got (not played with it any more yet)...

[dweller25]

You did well to get it "on chip" - it took me ages at first.

Try imaging Arcturus for a practice - it's really high.

[arad85]

Try imaging Arcturus for a practice - it's really high.

Good idea.

Got it on chip quite easily. Used a succession of 25 then 10mm to get it bang on centre visually then swapped for webcam and finally 2x barlow/webcam