View Single Post
  #2  
Old 11-06-2015, 06:33 PM
redbeard's Avatar
redbeard (Damien)
Registered User

redbeard is offline
 
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Adelaide
Posts: 558
Hi Evan,
The first thing to do here is to get your mount polar aligned. Don't worry about goto at this stage because there is no point until your mount is aligned.

How you correctly polar align is up to you as there are many different methods. I have a Meade LX200GPS and the setup should be the same. The method I use is by using the software 'Alignmaster'. It is very easy to use and it helps to polar align by selecting a set of stars selected from its database that are visible to your sky at the time.

That's just how I do it because it is very easy to use as I have to setup my scope each night that I want to use it as I have no obs as yet.
Once polar aligned, the next step is to ensure that all you scope settings are correct eg time/date, location, ect. GPS does most of this on my scope.

At this point, I put the scope into the home position and simply navigate with the hand controller to a star in the sky I know the name of. Once centred, I select that exact object from the hand controller object menu and I hold the enter key on the hand controller for about a second and a message comes up asking to Sync the object. Press enter again to sync the object.

I then do this to 2 other stars and the scope will goto really well from there. You can always sync on other stars throughout the night if need be.

I don't use any of the built in star alignment methods in polar mode because they have never worked well for me.
OK for Alt/Az though.

Hope this helps and ask any other questions if you have them.
I'm sure others have other methods on setting up their scopes and I would like to know if there is an even easier method of setup, but for me and a friend of mine who has the same scope, this does work very well.

Cheers,
Damien.
Reply With Quote