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Thanks Ken, Matt and Steffen. You have confirmed what I guessed was the case. I must say that I am very happy with the HEQ5 mount, it tracks smoothly and accurately, but I am underwhelmed with Synscan. I came back into astronomy with a Celestron 130SLT and the hand controller on that did allow input of any RA and Dec coordinates which overcame any limitations of its in-built object lists. Moreover, the software that came with it allowed one access to the full listing of those objects: Skywatcher doesn't seem to want to let the user know was is or is not in their 13,000 objects database.
The user-generated list of 25 objects in Synscan looks to me like a means to make a "favourites" list or a personal sky tour rather than means of locating unusual objects.
The idea of using a smart phone as a controller is interesting. I don't own one because we are in a poor reception area.
Thanks again for the input.
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