Orion Skyquest XT12G Goto not accurate

[zippeyjhon]

Help Needed! I have a Orion Skyquest XT12G Goto dob. Last night I unsuccessfully tried 5 times to get the Goto accurate. Each time I got a successful aliment according to the hand controller but each object was about a thumb with off (sorry don't know the degrees). Has anybody else had this issue? It was about -2 degrees and my telescope does have a battery about 1kg mounted to the base not sure if this makes any difference.

[madwayne]

Hi Zachary

I have the same kit and go to is always accurate, one of the many things I'm impressed with it.

Is your observing site reasonably level?
Do you have the correct latitude and longitude for your site?
Daylight saving set to N?
Another old chestnut is are you entering the date in the correct format per the hand controller? I would suggest you are because the error would be far greater than that you have described.

I would also remove the battery from the base. I doubt it would cause any error but you need to remove any variables that you can.

Wayne

[Atmos]

There are three easy things that can easily disrupt accurate gotos.

1) Not having accurate GPS coordinates (the GPS in your phone usually works well but does sometimes for whatever reason think you're somewhere else).
2) Not having accurate time (remember every four minutes equates to a degree of movement in the sky).
3) Not using a a reticule eye piece. It is easy to get sucked into using a wide field eye piece for the alignment procedure but guessing the centre of the EP can sometimes be pretty far off.

I have the same dob that you do, I rarely use it on flat ground due to the locations that I observe at and it does a reasonable job and compensating for that. I find it can work best to first slew to a bright star nearby to what you're wanting to look at, syncing on that star (hold down the ESC key for a couple of seconds from memory) and then moving onto your object.



Very good information too :)

[Allan_L]

Do you complete your alignments in the movements using "Right" and "Up" as suggested by the manual, as being the same final movements of the GoTo. [Unless you have changed default].

Other suggestions above are also good advice.

"A Thumbs Width" sounds like a small degree of error, much less than half a degree [depending on the focal length of the scope and the eyepiece].

[zippeyjhon]

Thanks Guys for all your suggestions. Will try and see if I can work it out.