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HEQ5 Alignment
Picked up my HEQ5 and Bintel 150mm F6 reflector scope last week and went out last night and this morning for some visual on stars and planets
I have no line of sight to SCP ( my house and large trees obstruct the view) so I carried out a rough polar alignment using the method I described in a previous post ( compass, magnetic declination and digital inclinometer )
Also made up a shadow stick from a 1metre x 10mm dowel set at 90 degrees and used the sun from 11.00am to 1.00pm to find east west then north south at 90degrees.Scribed a line on my pavers to indicate true north south ( did this 3 times to improve the accuracy of true north south )
When I set up the mount, level it and use the compass with magnetic declination, the scribed north south line on the pavers is almost spot on with the compass mag declination line ( use 2 plumb bobs to check )
Installed the mount head
My latitude was set with my digital inclinometer as per my current location
Set the mount up to achieve a home position.( Used myastroscience.com/homeposition and Astronomy shed ) taking into consideration we are in the southern hemisphere with RA and DEC all locked and marked
Installed the Scope and counterweights then carried out balancing as per Astronomy shed ( with all accessories on board )
Aligned the finder scope ( used the antenna of a 2 story house 40m away )
Collimated the scope spot on !
Set up the Syn scan for initialization
Carried out a 2 star alignment using Sirius and Procyon, had to manually centre the stars with the hand controller in the finder scope and then the eye piece ( I can only see about 8 or 9 stars due to being in a metropolitan area with light pollution )
After "Alignment successful" on the Synscan I chose to locate another object, the star Canopus , the mount slewed towards Canopus , looked in the finder scope nothing there , had to manually slew the telescope again quite a bit to centre the star
I thought with my rough polar aligment method I would at least get the chosen star or object in the finder scopes field of view, but obviously I'm a fair bit off.
The same with Jupiter early this morning, I selected Jupiter in the Synscan hand controller and again I was a fair way off in the finder scope
Although the mount did keep the objects in the field of view of the eye piece for some time once I manually centred them ( I'm use to continually nudging my 10" dob down the south coast at my holiday house )
Is my polar alignment that way off ? ( the Syncan did give a read out of the Mel and Maz values. From memory the Mel was pretty close but the Maz was something like 12deg off ?? )
By the way the Bintel 150mm F6 scope is a treat , great little scope !
Any advice or comments greatly appreciated
Martin
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