2nd night with scope some sucess some issues HEQ5 200p

[David010167]

I am very new to astronomy and bought a HEQ5 Synscan with 200p on Friday. Monday managed to get outside and see Jupliter and the four moons - very impressive. Tonight I got to see Jupiter again, M31 and the ring nebula. I find it quite astonishing that I can see so much detail, especialy Jupiter.

I do have one small quirk tonight. Using a two star alignment (vega & Dubhe), the scope tracks to the ring nebula perfectly to the center of the EP. Jupiter it is always out and I had to move the finder and 200p back to center.

Any ideas why the ring nebula is perfectly centered and Jupiter is not, could I have aligned on the wrong stars? Could my polar alignment be causing the problemm certainy my compass needs binning, it seems to stick a lot.

Any thoughts from the experts?

David

[bcfcciderhead]

Could be the compass, they dont like metal, try using Polaris.

Jupitar is always on the move, in my 7mm EP you can watch it move out of the field of view, so that might cause that at a guess, someone will know.

[Rols]

i know you asked for an experts advice, but are you sure your level?

bin the compass.

[brantuk]

I don't know about the EQ version of sysncan, but my alt/az version does like to work in segments of the sky. It's more accurate in an 8th sector - once I step outside that it goes a bit less accurate until I make PAE corrections for the new sector (if that makes sense).

What I'm saying is that widespread objects are often not centred - close together ones are no problem. It could also be a levelling issue as mentioned above and an accurate compass helps - and do allow for magnetic/true north difference.

[smulx]

That's the scope I'm going to get. Did you get some different EP's or are the ones that come in the box giving you good enough views?

[David010167]

Thanks for the replies.

I must admit I did not check to see if I was level - an amateur mistake, I was in too much of a rush to see what was out there in case the clouds rolled in.

I know I need to work on my Polaris alignment, I did a rough alignment, but could not see the reticule in the polar scope - black lines at night do not show up very well )

So far I love the scope and mount and have had a lot of fun setting it up and starting to learn about how telescopes and mounts work.

I bought the Revelation set of eyepieces as they were also a Sky at Night winner and the quality is much better than the ones supplied with the scope. I do intend to buy some additional better quality EPs as well - I know it sounds like I am getting carried away, but my excuse is photography which I have been doing for far too long, and the basic principle is the better the optics the better the image and certainly with my cameras.

regards

David

[Digz]

A great piece of kit which you will get hours of enjoyment out for sure.

As for the compass - make sure you are not using it close to the mount as all the metal in the mount / legs will distort the reading. As brantuk said make sure you adjust for magnetic variation to find true north. If the compass still sticks after trying that then bin it!

I read somewhere here that the mount didn't have to be level in order for polar alignment to be accurate? I am, of course no expert and I am happy to be corrected

One thing to remember is that Jupiter compared to star fields, nebula etc will have a different rate of movement therefore your mount will need to alter its tracking rate to suit. I have the NEQ6 Pro and assume it does this automatically as whenever I have looked at Jupiter it stays centered. I wouldn't know if the same is true for the HEQ5?

HTH

[iamzoso60]

I thought my Mak 127 was level, but objects kept moving towards the corners, within 30 seconds. What a differance spending an extra 5 mins setting up made. Now I can track objects for a good 10 mins before any adjustment is needed.

[Vega]

Ok a few things...

Spirit level: This does not affect polar alignment. Its just useful if you level the mount first before polar alignment then next time the scope is out, you can level it again and know its in the same position as before thereby requiring less time on polar alignment. (you can polar align an unlevel mount with no ill effects at all. Just as long as you polar align after every time the mount has been moved).

Using a compass: Not a good idea, its a very poor way of polar aligning (magnetic north is slightly different from celestial or true north anyway, not to mention metal and electrics from the mount affecting the compass). Always best to use polaris; either with polar alignment scope or by parking and locking the scope at 90degrees in DEC and adjusting the mount until polaris is centered in the eyepiece.

Slewing to Jupiter

Doing a successful 2 star align will usually get you close to your first target. Especially if one of your alignment stars is close to you're target (Like in your case with Vega being nearby the ring nebula). If you then slew to another part of the sky (jupiter), the goto will get you close but often wont be dead central, so its best to put a low power eyepiece back in when slewing to another target (im guessing you were using a high power eyepiece for viewing the ring neb then slewed to jupiter?). Also, if your polar align was poor, as time goes on, the mount' goto 'map' of the sky will get more and more inaccurate. So if you spent say 10-15 minutes looking at the ring neb then slewed to jupiter, this could have been another cause of it being out.

Star align & polar align

Its important not to confuse the two. without a half decent polar alignment, the 2 star align is a little useless. The goto's star align is just to help the goto 'map' where things are in the sky at a given time. However polar alignment is essential so that the mount is facing the right way (in alt and azm) to accurately use this goto map during your session as the sky moves.

Hope some of this makes sense

Cheers

Matt