Hi Philip,
Basically you need to be very precise in how you conduct your alignment star centring.
Follow his process in the article with respect to doing a reset on your handset, conducting motor calibration & then drive training. He recommends Polaris, which of course is not much good to us here in the South but, the alternative for us is to find a easily identifiable landmark at a least 1 mile distance & then using the highest magnification you can to conduct the drive training & being absolutely precise in the centring of this object. If you miss for whatever reason, do it again & do it at very slow speed.
Then when setting up for viewing, be very careful about leveling the tripod (use a small spirit level, not a bubble level) then after you have attached the fork & ota, make sure the mount is in the home position & then check that the ota is level. North pointing only needs to be within a couple of degrees.
Once you have done this, initialise the unit & check time, date, daylight savings & site entries & make sure they are correct.
Choose two star alignment & when you are centring the stars, do so at the highest magnification possible; at least 12mm eyepiece.
He then recommends slewing to a 3rd star & using the synchronise function. He strongly recommends never using the synchronise function on planets or moon.
When looking for DSS objects, select High Precision mode (this is found under the setup menu). It adds an extra step in the goto process, namely it takes you to a nearby bright star first, you centre that, again very precisely then, it slews to the DSS object.
After last nights session, I can highly recommend the High Precision mode for DSS hunting; every single nebula, cluster, etc.. was very close to centre view in a 40mm plossl & I was able to change out to a higher powered eyepiece without having to re-centre the object.
Mechanically, there is also a process referred to as 'Grease Redistribution'. I used this method as I wasn't keen to delve into the innards of the drives. It's not in the article but, it is available on Weasners site. I can copy it & PM it to you if you like.
Essentially though, it came down to making sure that one was a bit anally retentive in the setup process & ensuring high accuracy when centring alignment stars.
Happy to chat back & forth via PM about what I learnt if you would like
Cheers
Quote:
Originally Posted by iborg
Hi
I also have the LX90 8", and goto is usually OK, but, not good.
So thank you for posting this link and for saying that it has helped. I'll make sure I work my way through it in the near future.
As you have been communicating with the doc, is there anything you feel you can add to what is in the link?
Have fun
Philip
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