Advice needed on best mount settings for soutern hemisphere

[C8er]

Hi All,

I am looking for advice on best southern hemisphere settings for two scope setup settings for my two goto mounts.

OTA is an 8" f10 SCT with star diagonal normally viewed through at slew speeds 1-6 (correct vertical view but reversed horiz view) with a straight 6x30 finder (reversed vert and horiz views) mostly viewed through at slew speeds 7-9.

My two mounts are:
1. Celestron SE8 altaz goto mount.
2. Celestron CG-5 equatorial goto mount.

The two mount setup settings I am looking for southern hemisphere (New Zealand) and my OTA and finder type recommendations for are as below, for both mounts if they are going to be different.

1. Mount Goto Approach settings.

2. Mount Button Directions setting ( for certain slew speeds).

As well as recommendations for those settings, a recommendation of what final vert and horiz button pushes to use to finish an alignment or manual goto for the recommended mount settings would be great.
I have tried to read up about but this but conflicting recommendations have well and truly confused me.

I have managed to get backlash settings done and working well, and have upgraded my Nexstar+ HC firmware to latest version to successfully fix a runaway gotos problem on the SE mount (my CG-5 mount has the older Nexstar HC), but the best goto approach and button direction settings have me confused, on both mounts.

Cheers.

[Allan_L]

From my reading of the instructions, it does not matter - As Long As You Are Consistent.

The point is that the final approach for GoTo needs to be the same as the approach you used to Align the telescope each viewing session.

This is to maximise the accuracy of placing the GoTo object in the centre of the eyepiece.

After struggling with slightly off alignments for some time, I developed a strategy that worked for my CPC1100. (an ALt/Az mount)
Do your alignments on your stars as normal (using the right and up approach buttons as the last movements, as per default).
Then do a GoTo those same stars after alignment, to test the accuracy.
Even if just slightly off, I would do the re-align function just to get it sopt on.
This always worked a charm for me.

As for slew direction for different speeds, I experimented a bit but eventually settled on default settings.
So that using high slew speeds (>=7) for finder scope movements
and slower slew speeds (up to 6) for eyepiece adjustments.
Because of the differences between optics of the "finder" as opposed to "through the eyepiece", they both "seem" to move the scope in the same relative direction.
You just need to remember what slew speeds are for what scope (main scope or finder scope).

Hope this helps you.

Oh BTW Welcome :welcome:

[C8er]

Thanks for that advice Allan, and for the welcome here.

I think I have a consistent set of button pushes sorted out now that ends my alignments with the same direction movements as the mount's final goto movements.

I have taken your advice that it doesn't really matter what those directions are, so long as you are consistent and it gives the same movement as the mount's final goto movements. It was all confused by my altaz SE mount doing quite a lot of run away gotos, which I have now fixed with a hand control firmware update to the latest version. That new firmware and no more runaway gotos have transformed the mount, which I am really enjoying now.

Cheers,
Chris