am i aligning my skywatcher 130p correctly?

[james_uk]

Hi, i havnt had a clear night to actualy go out and try to align my skywatcher explorer 130p yet but i have set it up and set the co-ordinates to what i think is right, i have read the manual and online guides, i have found out that my latitude here in Liverpool should be 53 which i have set it to, can anyone please look at the below images of my set up and let me know if anything is incorrect, as i say the latitude is set to roughly just over the 52 degree mark as it seems to go up in marks of 2 and i have set the declination axis to 90, this is to try to align it with polaris when the sky is clear.

thanks

James

[Cornelius Varley]

Nearly right. The telescope would normally be positioned over the RA axis when pointing at the North Celestial Pole. But other than that your OK.

Peter

[james_uk]

Thanks for you fast reply peter, do you mean rather than being tilted to the left, tilt it to the right? i was looking at that but i found the cables where sometimes getting in the way of movement unless you do mean something else?

[Cornelius Varley]

With the telescope pointing directly at the NCP the telescope should be over the mount. For any other direction the telescope would be either to the left or right.

Peter

[themos]

I think the "canonical" starting position for a GEM is weights as low as they can go and declination 90, with tube pointing along the RA axis towards Polaris. You know you've got the declination right if whatever is in the centre of view does not move about when you swing the scope in RA.