Two Star Alignment

[Ric]

Hi all,
Last night, I was setting up my scope and performing the alignment sequence and everything worked well up to the point where the star was centred and I press "enter" on the handbox where at this point I got the message that alignment had failed and to realign the star which I did on the same star and was told the same thing again.
This time I shut the scope down and checked the manual to make sure I had done everything correctly and restarted and peformed the same sequence of events with no problems at all for the rest of the night.
If anyone has had this happen to them or has any thoughts on what happened I would be very interested.
I'm positive there isnt a problem, but it's just one of those things I would like to find an answer to.

cheers:astron:

[[1ponders]]

Hi Ric, it may be as simple as the first star you selected may not have been the star shown on the handbox, from there on in you were always going to lose to a machine :D Happened to me manyatime in my LX200GPS days. :doh:

JaT

[Ric]

Hi Paul,
Thanks for the reply,
I always select Antares as my first star at the moment as it is easy to find and centre and then move over to ACrux, another one I cant miss.
I have used these two for the last 3 months with all sessions, thats what made it more interesting.

Cheers

[Omaroo]

Another problem for me, but with the automatic rather than 2-star alignment routine. I found it difficult to actually see which star it was referring to in the finderscope. The crosshairs were "kinda" near a bunch of rather dim stars so I just chose the one I thought looked the brightest. It obviously wasn't the right one - for either fix. The final alignment was way off.

Looking at the manual again today, it suggests that if you have trouble determining just which star it's referring to (either dim, or has a tree or something in the way), hit the scroll-down button and it will try another star for you. Only after this did it actually give me a really obvious target.

What version of AutoStar II are you running? I'm still on 4.01, so I'll be upgrading to 4.1 as soon as I get my lappie happening. Is this version a fix for you problem maybe?

Cheers
Chris

[sheeny]

:lol: I love it... I can just hear my partner, Lyn: "That's only the machine's opinion!!!". I shudder think what she'd do to my scope if she encountered some of the problems I have over the years!:rofl: Oh, I can just imagine the sound of scrap metal in production...

Al.

[Ric]

Hi Chris
I am using V4.1
I used to use the automatic alignment to start with but I got bored waiting for the scope to do it's little dance and then it would slew to stars that I wasn't familiar with so I was forever scrolling around until I found one I knew.
I find the two star alignment to be the quickest and probably the more accurate way to set up. If you use stars that you are familiar with you can slew them in accurately (I use an illuminated reticle). I have been using Antares (cant miss a big red star) and ACrux (once again, cant miss a double star) from that point on everything I goto for the rest of the night is perfectly centred in the eyepiece and the DSI II as well.

Cheers

[Omaroo]

Thanks Ric - I'll definitely try your method tonight... if it's clear.

LOL! I agree that the auto-alignment is rather time-consuming. I think I'd rather drive!

Cheers
Chris

[Ric]

Hi Chris,
Let me know how it goes, I be interested to know what your thoughts are.

cheers

[acropolite]

I gave up on automatic alignment, I manually level, set north and then pick my own alignment stars. It's far easier and more reliable.:thumbsup: Also as chris said various versions have had problems and if your time/date or location details are incorrect that can also cause problems with alignment. I'm not sure if it affected the LX200 as well but at least one version of the LX90 handbox software had problems when more than one custom site was added.

[Omaroo]

Thanks fellas - fixed!

Ric - went the two-star method off Achernar & a-Crux. Went like a charm - thanks for the tip! GOTO worked perfectly after that. Now... if it wasn't for every dang neighbour turning their backyard spot lights on to see what the slewing noise was I'd have seen more...:rolleyes: Do they have a "stealth" set of gears & motors? It was still dark enough to get a couple of decent open clusters in. Very nice indeed!

Now I think I have a focus problem. I tried the 11mm, 26mm & 32mm EP's and none of them gave me a clear view of Jupiter. All fuzzy - even after both rough focus & microfocusser were tried. I suppose that the machine needs a good collimation adjustment when I figure out how to go about it.:D

Cheers
Chris

[Ric]

Hi Chris,
Thats great it all went smoothly,glad to help out.
I know how you feel about the neighbours lights, I suffer the same problem to the south. The fellow comes out for a smoke and puts on his flood lights and garage lights, then goes back inside and leaves them all on for the rest of the night. quite a few times I have packed up in disgust. I'll just have to finish building the house at Wamboin where the nearest neighbours light is almost a kilometre away. In the meantime I will have to don the black astro beanie and do my best mission impossible impersonation and go and pinch his light bulbs LOL.

cheers

[Omaroo]

Cheers Ric:)

Wamboin! We pass you every weekend or two on the way to our place in Cooma. Great spot! We (my wife Jenny) buys all sorts of food preservation jars from a woman at a place she calls "Camelot" - in Poppet Road (I think - is that the one with the church on the corner?) on the ACT border, so we stop there a lot. We should catch up one Friday evening for a spot of stargazing. We have a rooftop tent on the Land Rover so can stop overnight anywhere. After that - maybe come down to Omaroo and have a go from the top of our hill :thumbsup:

[OneOfOne]

My scope has 3 star alignment, but the concept is much the same. One night I had done all three alignments, pressed ALGN and the controller went into the land of nod! After a couple of minutes I turned it off and on again. Went through the same procedure, with the same stars and it worked. The cause? Dunno! Don't much care.

I did once align on the wrong star and the goto just went nuts, the alignments were way off...I think I thought Alnair was Peacock, which is fairly close. This time of year, like last night, I use Peacock because it is high above the neighbours trees and it is easy to check with binos that there is a triangle of stars one field "to the right". Last night I used Formalhaut and the third, in the west, is usually something in Crux or Alpha or Beta Cen, I try to not favour the same star all the time in case the others get jealous.

[Ric]

My biggest problem is my viewing area, we are currently renting in the suburbs and only have a small courtyard to set up in. As a result my viewing window is best from the Southwest through to the Southeast and up to the zenith, everything else is lost to the house and neighbours garage which limits my choice of alignment stars. It will be great when I finish building the house and observatory which is rural and no lights anywhere, I'll have a whole new area of sky to rediscover.

cheers

[Ric]

Hi Chris,
I know Poppet Road and the church, we are not far from there.
We are not living there at the moment but are out there most weekends building, probably about 6 to 12 months before its to lockup and liveable.
If you ever want to pop in on your way back to Sydney and have a break feel free, just PM me for directions

Cheers

[Karls48]

Hi All
I have done 2 star alignment on ETX 105 about year ago and did not touch it since. I always park the telescope before I switch it off. Then when I’m going to use it again I level the tube and point it to the North. Skip alignment, enter date and time and connect to the Sky Map software. Then I use “Go to” to slew scope to say Alpha Centauri. The star is usually not visible in the eyepiece so I manually centre the star and then click on “Sync.” in Sky Map. I “Sync.” on every object I’ observing or imagining. And it works very well; the telescope slews to stars always in or close to the centre.

[Ric]

Hi Karl,
I use Star Atlas Pro which has "sync" as well and I must agree that it is one very handy option.

Cheers