Aligning help

[vlazg (George)]

Hi All,

I know there is a thread about this somewhere but I cannot find it.
I am having great difficulty setting my azeq6 for alignment. I take great care in making sure the mount is level, points south allowing for magnetic variation and also use an inclinometer for altitude. Using the handset the first slew is up to 10deg out, surely it should not be this much.
If I use eqmod wih eqdir after gps data input there is not much difference.
Any help would be appreciated.
George

[Eden (Brett)]

Hi there George,

Sorry to hear you're having problems getting your mount aligned. Here are some suggestions which I hope are of use:

- If you're at a reasonably dark site, try using the polar scope to roughly align your mount to the pole. If you're not sure how to do this, there is an excellent video tutorial on YouTube which was done by Dion at the Astronomy Shed.

- Run the three star alignment routine in the Synscan hand controller and for the moment, ignore the fact that the first slew is not within the telescopes field of view.

- After you've completed the alignment routine on three stars, proceed to the polar alignment routine in the hand controller. When doing the polar alignment, try choosing a star which is close to the meridian. Depending on what time of night you're doing this, Sirius is a good choice around this time of year.

- If you're off the pole, the polar alignment routine will see this and prompt you to make the relevant corrections. After you've completed the polar alignment, power off the mount and repeat both the three star alignment and polar alignment once more, just to be sure.

You can effectively do a rough polar alignment right from the first alignment star by using the altitude and azimuth adjustments rather than the buttons on the hand controller to bring the first star into the telescopes field of view. To improve the accuracy of the alignment, I suggest using either a high-powered eyepiece or bringing the focus out a bit so as to enlarge the star and make it easier to position in the middle of the eyepiece/crosshair.

Once you've been through those steps, verify the accuracy of your alignment by using the goto routine to have the mount slew to a target. If it didn't help and you're still having problems, let us know.

Cheers

[rustigsmed (Russell)]

hi George,
what firmware version are you currently running?
Make sure you update it to atleast v3.35. some of the earlier ones between 3.27 and 3.35 were quite buggy with pointing.

cheers,

russ

[vlazg (George)]

Thanks for the replies.

Russ, I am using the latest version Synscan

Eden, At my latitude 12.25 deg south the polar scope is useless but I will try your other suggestions, At the moment I am in town learning so no dark site as yet. I've been waiting since October for the wet season to end to get started.
With the first rough alignment do you move the mount and scope without the handset after aligning or do you do it with the first slew?

Will let you know
Cheers
George

[MattT]

Do a two star alignment and forget three if thats what your doing. Two is good enough. Two stars worked for me with an NEQ6 and V3.35.

Do you have all the time date daylight saving etc done on the handset properly? Finder scope set up etc….

Matt

[uwahl (Ulrich)]

If you are using a compass for the initial rough set up remember to keep well clear of iron / steel eg Car. 20 metres if possible.

[killswitch (Edison)]

Confirm the time (No DST) and GPS details is all correct.

If the slew on the first alignment star is no where near the star, manually move the mounts Alt-Az bolts till the star is centre in the scope.

The slew for the second alignment star should then fall into place and just center it using the keypad.

[vlazg (George)]

Thanks to all who replied, tried your suggestions last night with much improvement.

George

[raymo]

In addition to what killswitch said, if the first slew is more than around
6 or 7 degrees out, it is better to correct it by moving the tripod rather than using the azimuth adjustment knobs, as you can easily run out of adjustment.
Raymo

[vlazg (George)]

Yeah Raymo,
found that out last night, started again after centering azimuth knobs, then moved mount until close, then final adjustment with knobs, some star trailing after 1 minute or so, a great improvement.

Now i have to work out why i could not calibrate phd, " lack of star movement"
Too cloudy tonight, tomorrow hopefully.

George

[Eden (Brett)]

Hi there George,

Assuming that you do have the guiding cable connected to the mount, you may need to increase the calibration step size in PHD. Click on the "brain" icon, go to mount and down to where it has your calibration step size in milliseconds.

PHD2 has a calculator there which should provide you with the optimal step size for your setup. If using this value still has the software generating a warning that the star did not move enough, increase this value by 100ms increments until calibration completes successfully.

Originally Posted by vlazg

Yeah Raymo,
found that out last night, started again after centering azimuth knobs, then moved mount until close, then final adjustment with knobs, some star trailing after 1 minute or so, a great improvement.

Now i have to work out why i could not calibrate phd, " lack of star movement"
Too cloudy tonight, tomorrow hopefully.

George

[vlazg (George)]

Thanks Eden,

Mount is connected
I will try when no clouds.

George

[killswitch (Edison)]

Originally Posted by vlazg

Now i have to work out why i could not calibrate phd, " lack of star movement"

Are you trying to calibrate near the pole? Because theres less star movement at high DEC's, so you will need to increase the calibration step size.

Try calibrating near your intended target or closer to the equator.

[bugeater (Marty)]

I also had a bit of trouble with PHD calibrating because the guide speed (?) in EQMOD was only at 0.1x sidereal rate, which I think is quite low. It would take ages and occasionally fail. I bumped it up to 0.4x and made adjustments in PHD's step size calculator to account for the change as well. It now calibrates much quicker. Not sure of the impact on guiding quality though.

[rustigsmed (Russell)]

I am not sure if it is directly related but make sure you have entered the correct focal length the guide cam is working from in the settings.

[vlazg (George)]

With great embarrassment I have just realised I put in the fl of rhe main scope, not the guide scope in calibration setup. Gave me 100ms, OOPS, Thanks Russell
Edison, I am trying to calibrate near the scp, if there is no difference I will try as Eden and you suggested and increase the rate.
If no cloud will let you know.
George

[rustigsmed (Russell)]

Originally Posted by vlazg

With great embarrassment I have just realised I put in the fl of rhe main scope, not the guide scope in calibration setup. Gave me 100ms, OOPS, Thanks Russell
Edison, I am trying to calibrate near the scp, if there is no difference I will try as Eden and you suggested and increase the rate.
If no cloud will let you know.
George

Don't feel embarrassed George, astrophotography can have so many things go wrong - its a continual improvement process! when i started off i was trying to guide on the camera's hot pixel rather than an actual star funny in hindsight but not when you've got a million things to sort out!

let us know how you get on

[vlazg (George)]

Twas the cable

[Eden (Brett)]

Originally Posted by vlazg

Twas the cable

It's good that you've identified the source of the problem. As Russ said, no need to be embarrassed. There's a considerable learning curve involved here and we've all had our fair share of issues to work through. Looking forward to seeing your images, George.