Quote:
Originally Posted by Wavytone
Even easier.
Word of advice: RTFM. Carefully. Get the manual as a PDF and stick it in your smartphone and follow it step by step.
*Have Printed out the manual and read it cover to cover especially the alignment routine. Good idea putting on the phone though.
1. Level the tripod head - I use an app that does it to 0.1 degree. The bubble levels on most tripods are junk. The reason this matters is that I have come to the conclusion the Synscan handset assumes the tripod head is flat and doesn't really compensate for any tilt - and the Meade handset will be likewise.
*Took your advice and used a App on my phone rather than the dinky Bubble level designed to go into the eyepiece diagonal
2. Assemble mount and scope.
*Not much to assemble Tripod and Telescope complete with Mount.
3. Go through the alignment routine. While a a 1 star alignment may suffice for a quick look at something, if you are setting up for a long night a 3 star alignment will give much better results.
*Only have One and Two star alignments on this no three star.
The common errors for noobs are (these are D'uh moments):
a) Forgot to level tripod.
*Done!
b) Failed to put the scope in the PARK position before power-on.
*Not possible on this Mount . No Clutches!
c) Scope is on the wrong side of the mount (this matters for alt-az mounts).
*Not sure but nothing mentioned in the manual on this. No Hard stops on this mount.
d) Latitude entered was N instead of S, or longitude is W not E.
*Selected Sydney hard to go wrong there. Could fine tune the co-ordinates but hardly necessary I would think.
e) Date was entered as DD MM YYYY instead of MM DD YYYY (damn those yankees)
*Month is in Alphanumerics so can't get it wrong.
f) Time entered, or time zone incorrect or forgot about daylight saving.
*Double checked all ok!
g) Aligned on the wrong star.
Possible !
Of these the most common bungles are probably a, d, e and g in that order. Even after 45 years I sometimes screw this up.
|
Also used True North best I could and that seems to have made a huge difference. I am getting there slowly. Cloudy again . Playing indoors with a Astronomy App on the tablet to locate the where the stars etc are ,and got to say it is tracking pretty well. Mars at the moment.
Well this is my 4th Day so you are a few years experience ahead of me
