Article: Basic Setup Procedure for a German Equatorial Mount (GEM) Telescope

[iceman (Mike)]

Hi all

Trevor Hand (OneOfOne) has written a fantastic article, perfect for beginners, Basic Setup Procedure for a German Equatorial Mount (GEM) Telescope.

You can read the article from the IceInSpace Projects and Articles page, or directly from the link below:

Basic Setup Procedure for a German Equatorial Mount (GEM) Telescope

Thanks to Trevor for writing the article.

If you'd like to submit an article or other content to IceInSpace, please Contact Me.

[iceman (Mike)]

Article uploaded and this thread stickied.

[Michael V]

G'day Trevor,
May i congratulate you on your article. You have gone to a lot of effort, it all makes really good sense, and the pictures with their notations are really excellent.

Michael

[dannat (Daniel)]

looks terrific, well done trevor

[Jeff]

Great work Trevor, well explained and excellent pics/diagrams.

Cheers,
Jeff

[HarryD (Greg)]

Thanks Trevor

You have a knack of making the difficult seem so easy. This sort of info sure makes a new GEM owner feel more relaxed about their purchase.

Merry Christmas to you all.

[telecasterguru (Frank)]

Thanks for the great article. As a learner since given a little refractor with GEM for Christmas this article was invaluable to explain how to set up the mount but also why it is set up that way. I was totally confused as to why the south celestial pole was so important and now I understand.

Frank
Telecasterguru

[lacad01 (Adam)]

Great article! Will be picking up my new EQ6 tomorrow so this will definitely come in handy getting oriented

[clem]

I have tried and tried, but I can't get alignment right. I did the compass, I have calibrated the mount, I compensated for true south, I tweaked my latitude, and still, I couldn't get accurate alignment. First star is off the center of my finderscope, then the second star is way off, third one I couldn't see at all. What am I doing wrong? Is it me or is it the mount (EQ3-2) or the Synscan goto system? Heelp!!!

[OneOfOne (Trevor)]

You may want to post a new thread in the beginners area. This will bring it to the attention of people better, most may think your question is about the article than your alignment problems.

Unfortunately, you are not in Melbourne or I might be able to have a look. One thing that I have done myself, , on a couple of occasions is to plug the RA and Dec cables into the wrong sockets, have you checked these? The alignment goes absolutely nuts as you can imagine. My scope also goes nuts if the battery is almost flat, I doubt this is your problem though.

[John45 (John)]

Thankyou so much for this article. Being new to astronomy, I know that a good quality mount is very important, so I have just bought a Losmandy G8 and this explains absolutely everything that is required to set it up.

[Mutley (Paul)]

Thank you for this, My instruction manual that came with my scope might as well been written in Hungarian! This helped me out no end. Top article. Many Thanks

[mongol01 (Tim)]

Thanks to Trevor for such an in depth article for someone like me who has just purchased an ebay scope with a GEM. Unfortunately seeing has not been good since I received it, but still trying to get the thing adjusted and oriented properly. I have twiddled everything on the scope, the RA dial turns too. Must be able to calibrate it or something? I had set the Lat for Brisbane, I live about the same Lat, but west. The scale for Lat is that fine that I would be hard pressed to get within 1 deg. anyway. Could someone please explain to me about setting the RA? Very useful site, many thanks. Come on sigma octans! will find you soon.

[mongol01 (Tim)]

Many thanks to MangroveDutch for his advice re
gem setup. I feel I asked something reallly stupid. Will try youtube for more help.

[Brisbane (Joe)]

very informative Trevor,

saved to my favorites, user friendly and great pics/diagrams. I wish I had seen this a few years ago I would have spent more time viewing.

Joe

[ourkind (Carlos)]

This article should be included as a suppliment in all GEM packages!!

Thanks it was very helpful!!

[Douvie (John)]

Thanks Trevor,

I have a lot of reading to do. The documentation that came with my scope is confusing, and even more difficult to understand if one is a noob. At least your how-to explains the important details.

[brian nordstrom (As avatar)]

Thanks for your time and effort Trevor , a great artical .
Brian.