GoTo attempts

[quantum64]

I finally had the chance to utilize the GoTo features of my telescope. Overall, I've had a lot of fun. I do have a problem I am running into though.

After a polar and 3-star alignment, I continually have to adjust to where objects are in the sky. However, other objects will be in perfect alignment. For instance, the other night I selected the Moon in my GoTo system and the telescope pointed toward the moon, but it wasn't even in the field of view. I still had to move it to get the moon in the eyepiece. Then I selected the Orion Nebula (on the other side of the sky) and it came right into the center of my eyepiece. It tracks ok for a while, but they objects eventually fall out of the field of view.

I have done this several times and keep running into this problem. Objects on one side of the sky seem to align alright, but the other doesn't.

Any advise as to how to troubleshoot the issue would be great! I have a feeling it's the polar alignment, but I don't see what I'm doing wrong. Keep in mind I am still new.

-Orion Skyview Pro 8 Eq GoTo

[rowan46]

hi I am not famliar with the orion software as I have a celestron but most of them operate on similar principles. there should be some sort of sync function where you can realign when you move to a new part of the sky. all go to's lose a little accuracy when you slew them around a bit so every now and then you you have to realign on one new star and replace one of the previous alignment stars with one in the patch of sky you are observing this keeps its model of the sky up to date. I hope this helps.

[valleyman]

Are you leveling the mount? It should be as level as you can get it, using a bubble.

Also have you put the corrct co-ordinates in for your location.

Most go to also use american dating system mm/dd/yy.

Hope this helps

[derherr65]

GOTO is very sensitive to date, time, location, and level. If you haven't set your exact lat/long do so. Be fairly meticulous about all of the above numbers.

Like a previous poster I have a different system, Meade. There are sub menus that allow the user to retrain the motors, etc. I found that helped my scope significantly.

[JamesM]

I agree with the above in that I would first start with leveling the tripod as accurately as possible, as it would explain why on one side you hit target whilst moving it somewhere else you're a bit out. I'm not a great fan of those bubble levels and prefer to use a long level in all directions as it seems more accurate.

James

[quantum64]

Appreciate the replies everyone. I had some more issues, but I went out again last night and had better luck.

I was ultra meticulous with all the date/time/location settings and also paid MUCH more attention to the three star alignment.

That seemed to do the trick!

[brantuk]

As Rowan says above - not many scopes will track dead center all night without some sort of guiding. Objects will eventually start to drift off center a little and recentering or re-alignment becomes necessary.

Celestron scopes allow you replace the current object with a new one (or the same one) freshly centered, Skywatcher have a thing called PAE (pointing accuracy enhancement) and I guess Orion goto must have a similar thing too.

It becomes more noticeable when tracking past the southern meridian. A quick re-align mid session is no big overhead