whiiir whiiiiiir buzz beep

[ving]

yup, that was me last night :)

adventures in goto.

I set up my tripod first getting it as close to facig the SCP as i could, leveled it, and placed the head on it... all well before sunset. as it started to get dark i put the scope on the mount... darkness set

now turning teh mount on the controller asked me if i want to align (or something similar) and after entering time, date, location, etc and then re entering the date cause the darn americans want it MM/DD/YYYY i was set to do my next step. here it gives me a choice of 1, 2, or 3 star alignment. it took for ever to work this out cause i realised that i dont actually know many star names LOL, and the fact i was being lazy and trying to do a 1 star alignment....
handy hint: do not do a one star alignment!

so after fiddling around with a one star alignment and trying to figure out why the scope wouldnt go where i wanted i decided on a 2 star alignment :rolleyes: this was much better....

finally aligned, cheryl started to make noises (come in type noises) and so armed with cartes du ciel i picked out some objects to find the acuracy was pretty darn good :D
:thumbsup:

big thumbs up to both H0ughy and Acropolite for supplying the controller and cables :thumbsup:
thanks guys :)

[sejanus]

If you do a 3 star with a crosshair reticle it'll be pretty much pinpoint center on objects. Try and pick stars that are a fair distance from each other.

[ving]

thanks, i'll do that :)

need reticle EP now :)
is the purchase of astro gear never ending?

[sejanus]

Ving something else I forgot to mention - on the v3.11 controller it sorts the stars by brightness - so a couple of times when I've used a alignment star that I'm not familiar with - I just tell the eq6 to use that star then it'll slew to the rough location, then with the telrad I just look for the brightest star in that rough area and chances are it's the one the eq6 wants.

you could prob do the same on yours, just make sure the initial position of the mount is correct.

I just got a cheapy $99 illuminated reticle it does the job.

[davidpretorius]

start ship vingster is go!!!

love your "come in noises" comment - a classic!!!

sounds great!

[ving]

i was just looking at a meade 9mm :)



thanks :)
I used cartes to find out where the star was... some of the sugested stars were below the horizon. i used Aldebaran which i knew and some star in carina starting with M :)
worked fine :) could have used canopus i guess

[ving]

yeah it was fun once i had it figured out dave :)

[Astroman]

1 star alignment is only accurate if your mount is perfectly aligned, as in setup in an obsrvatory, even then minor mount errors could induce a error in the alignement. Good luck with further testing David, one thing you may find the thing not GOTOing planets properly, this was a common problem with the 2.05 HC although some people have had great success, I guess it depends on if it was made on a wednesday or a friday arvo I guess.

[ving]

I think mine was teh wednesday version... not sure, how do you check? :P

hehe!

[matt]

I was told by Steve Massey the trick with 2-star Vs 3-star is this.

2-star: align on 2 stars the same side of the meridian, more than 3 hours apart in RA and greater than 3 degrees apart in Dec.

3-star: same as above, but the 3rd star on the opposite side of the meridian with a difference in Dec to the first 2 alignment stars of 30-70 degrees.

I mostly use 2-star and it seems to work OK... although the accuracy falls away a little when you cross to the opposite side of the sky. 3-star doesn't seem to help this much.

[ving]

thanks for the tip matty

[erick]

Only one solution, ving, which I use - move further up the backyard, out of hailing range! :D

[ving]

dang, i have such a small yard :(
:P

never mind. this thread is about me finaly geting goto not about "noises" :)

[g__day]

As a hint get a star map and learn the names of the brightest 20 stars, it only changes every season, so when it suggests go to Sirus, Canopus, Rigel, Proycon, Pollux, Betelguese, Formahult, Achernar, Alhena, AlderBaran, Capella, Regulus etc you know where they are and whether it has gone there or not!

[ballaratdragons]

Yay! Onya Vingo!!! :cool:

The new GoTo King. :lol:

I haven't tried my GoTo EQ6 outside yet as I don't get home from work till 11:30pm and I have fallen asleep within 5 mins of getting home each night this week. :sadeyes:

And today I find out I don't even get the weekend off :eyepop:
Next week is very early starts so I luck out again. :(

One day I will get to use my new EQ6 :lol: Looks like 19th January will be the first chance.

Enjoy your GoTo :thumbsup:

[iceman]

I get mine tomorrow! Can't wait to hear my first buzz whirrr beep beep ringing out in the backyard! :)

[h0ughy]

Wearther warning - Severe Squalls, hail, tornados and damaging winds in the central coast area due just after Lunch Saturday ;-)

[33South]

http://www.amateur-astronomy.org/Filez/SkyScanStarCharts.zip

This is for v2 controller but bright stars are bright stars.

I printed the charts out and using the controller index provided circled all the usable stars with highlighter, I used blue seems to shows up well with a red torch.

Acknowledgments to EQ6 Yahoo Group.

[ving]

thanks, that will come in use :)

[ballaratdragons]

Hooray!!!

I have my EQ6 out in the back yard. I have been trying to find the SCP in the PolarScope since just after sunset and it's now 11pm and I still can't find it!!!!!!!!!!! :sad: :sad: :sad:

I can't even find it with Binoculars! :tasdevil:

I know where it is, I know what the Asterism looks like, but I'll be blowed if I can find it tonight :shrug:

Man, this is damn frustrating :mad2:

[davidpretorius]

i can imagine that it could be an absolute pain in the arse.

and then tomoroow, you go out and within 5 minutes you go "there it is"


aaaarrrgghhh!

[ballaratdragons]

Yep Davo,

I fluke it with my huge EQ, and the piddly little EQ1, but the EQ6 has the aid of a polarscope and I still can't find it :sadeyes:

I gave it a 'close enough' trial run and it didn't GoTo anything on alignment stars. Not even close!

Oh well, I'll give it another hour or so before I give up for the night. Work tomorrow :help:

[sejanus]

ken, unless you want to precisely aligned for photography it doesn't matter. just point it as close as you can and then do a 2 or 3 star align. you don't need a precise polar aligment for goto functionality.

one trick i did to find octans once was do a 2 star align, and then do a goto on one of the stars in octans.

[ballaratdragons]

Hmmmm, worth a try Sej :thumbsup: Thanks

Going back out to try it. Back later.

[sejanus]

btw ken don't worry if it's initial guess of the alignment locations is a fair way out.

Sometimes it lands with in a few degrees, sometimes it's out by miles. I just use my telrad and line them all up!

[h0ughy]

ken do the compass trick and align from that, making sure the mount was level, then you should get close. drift align Ken, use the force............

[Doug]

My EQ6 has a few bugs in it, but overall not a bad bit of hardware.
I'm lucky I guess in that mine is on a permanent pier mount. After inputting all the data including GPS time, I do a 1 star alignment, (Sirius) and it puts Sirius on the DSI chip first go.(Not dead center, but there) Guiding with a web cam and Guide Dog for over an hour saw only 2 brief pulses to the south dec correction; I guess it is Polar aligned ok, these were not evenly spaced in time so might have been atmospherics rather than Dec drift. Of course there are several East/West corrections due to PE.
But it doesn't play back PEC!:sad: Nor can I PEC train with the guider; gotta do it the hard way:sadeyes: . PEC probably doesn't matter that much if I'm auto guiding, but the less work the guider has to do the better I think.
After a few different mess ups, I loose Sirius from the roll of Objects. The first controller did that, but its a bit of a worry that the new one looses it too. There might be other stars that go missing in action, Sirius is the only one I know of. The other thing that seems amiss is in searching for a star object, the thing jumps to the next, or was it the previous star in the list. eg I want to slew to Mintaka, select it press enter and the display has moved to another m star. Press esc and try again and it will work the second time; this has happened repeatedly so it is not a one off. Doesn't seem to do this with Messier, NGC or Planet gotos, only stars.
Enjoy your EQ6s

[Doug]

I forgot to mention; I set the pier up as level as I can. The bubble on the mount is off at about 1 o'clock as you face the control panel.
I did not notice any shift in azimuth as I adjusted Altitude or visaversa, which suggests that the bubble level in the mount is only there to fill up the hole. The little pointer on the altitude scale has the capacity for a small amount of adjustment, but not much as it is set in a recess. Mine as supplied is indicating an altitude of about 36 deg. for a latitude of 34d 06'.

[sejanus]

doug i have the exact same issue regarding naming of stars dissapearing, and reappearing as you say.

[ballaratdragons]

I have just been out the back yard and had a blast! :cool:

Houghy, I don't own a spirit level (must get one!) but I used my digital compass. :)

Well, after lining up on the 'area' of SCP I did a 2 star alignment on Beteguese and Acrux. After that, everything I asked it to GoTo was just on the periphery of the finderscope, then I centred them in the EP by the directional arrows :thumbsup:

I was asking it of a lot, as I wasn't polar aligned and I was using a Pentax 9mm in the ED80 :P

But, the good news is that everything I went to was soooooo close to being in the FOV. :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

I am very pleased Mr. Houghy ;)

[ballaratdragons]

Hmmmmm, silly me :ashamed:

I just re-checked my alignment stars in Cartes du Ciel.

I asked it to align on Acrux but I actually aligned the scope to Gacrux!!!!

I thought Acrux was the top one in the Crux :doh:
That might account for some of the error :lol:

[iceman]

Excellent news Ken.. can't wait to have my first play!

[h0ughy]

Glad its working Ken

[acropolite]

Ken the goto will probably improve out of sight once you get a decent alignment. My LX will put objects in the centre 1/3rd of the FOV at 76x mag, so I would imagine your EQ6 would achieve similar accuracy on goto once properly aligned.

[ballaratdragons]

re: trouble finding SCP


I went out 20 mins after packing up last night and there it was!!!!! :tasdevil:

[ballaratdragons]

Vingo, how are you going with your new set-up???????

[ving]

hi ken, glad you asked :P

went out last night to a dark site (yes on a school night!) with some MAS guys. When i got there it was almost dark, just light enough to read my compass. I looked at the ground and said "looks pretty flat", so i didnt bother leveling, then got my compas out and set the mount about 10 deg east of south. In my haste I almost put the ota on before the counterweights :P

anyhow once set up i got my GPS out to get teh co-ords and entered them, did a 2 star alignment on aldebaran and some star in carina (Mia-something). I found that when it was slewing to these stars it was out by quite a bit so i had to use the arrows to center them in my 9mm ep (need EP with crosshairs).
Once this was done I found that it centered objects fiarly well in the 9mm (out about 1/3 from teh center of the EP). not bad for a quick align. I haent used the polar alignment scope yet.

over all happy :D

slewed to a few ngcs i have never seen before... and a hint, thors helmet is naught but an averted vision smudge in a 8" scope :P

[ballaratdragons]

Now for an update please, Vingo the Dingo.

As I have no sky to look at still, how is your 'GoTo' GoTo'ing?

Any better accuracy yet?
Seen any new objects?
Getting better at setting it up?
Thoughts, suggestions, reviews?