Thread: eq6 slewing
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Old 19-02-2009, 03:35 PM
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bmitchell82 (Brendan)
Newtonian power! Love it!

bmitchell82 is offline
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: Mandurah
Posts: 2,597
Theres one more step that your missing. and it is fairly important.!

My Method.

1. using a compass and a wooden bar across the back legs get your polar south orientation (remember to allow for magnetic deviation).

2. Use a very good level (engineers level) or a digital inclometer (bunnings 30 bucks, but make sure to calibrate the inclometer best to have double redundancy!!!) to level the tripod as accurate as you can get it this is important also make sure that you have tightend up the spreader plate tight then try and pull the legs out futher, they will sometimes keep moving even if the spreader plate nut is tight as.

3. Put your head mount on and screw in the pole from below so its just tensioned. now this is where you set your home position (important). Get your RA rotation (the biggest of the moving axis) with your level in the middle it should be perfectly level. now set your setting circles to read 6 hours, the trick is that when you bring the mount back to 0 hours it is perfectly inline with the south pointing leg.

Now with the mount at zero turn the Dec axis (where you attach your scope to) horizontally, and get it perfect with your level once again. Once you have done this set your setting circles to 90 degrees so that when you spin the mount back around to zero degrees your telescope, mount head counter weights and south facing leg is all perfeclty aligned in a straight line.

Once you have done this congratulations your mount is set up the best it can be and if you have taken your time and got it perfect octanis should be in your finder scope (seen as the shepards crook then in the ep octan can bee seen as the classic triangle)

Now this is where you do a drift alignment before going for a star alignment, this takes care of any miss alginment that you have done during the initial setup. do some reading into this as it is important if you wish to get into astro phtography later.

do your 3 star alignment and every star you goto after that hold the esc key, this syncronizes your hand paddle.

hope this helps you be less affraid.
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