|
G'day Adrian. I haven't had time + clear skies to mess around with a 3 star alignment yet. I still don't believe I should need to but will try anything to get to the bottom of this issue. The attached screen shot shows 3 focus images of 5 seconds each.
The top image is Hadar as it falls when selected for a 1 star alignment. That is to say that what this shows is the pointing accuracy from park position after I have entered date/time and selected Hadar for a 1 star alignment routine.
Below left is Hadar after I have centered it. Actually it is a bit off center, but close enough. Bottom right is a 5 sec focus shot of Omega centauri without any adjustment after a goto. As you can see the Mount's pointing accuracy is quite satisfactory when I use the built in data base to goto a target. I tried to do a forth shot of Centaurus A because that involved a meridian flip, but high cloud + fullish moon beat me. Still Centaurus A was on the frame but shifted a little to one side of center. The problem still remains that using the hand controller to move to a non data base object seems to fail. Tonight I tried a new target, (hence Aligning on Hadar instead of Spica), but again the target seems not to be there. Tonight was not a good night to be trying to match faint star fields, but my mount is well polar aligned, that is why I am so mystified at not finding non database objects. The other intriguing thing is that after finding Omega Centauri, I used the H/C to manually go back to Hadar's RA and Dec and found that it was still back in center frame. I can't blame the H/C, entirely, but maybe it in some way compares with the data bases or else the other night was a red herring. I need some good clear nights to really get to the bottom of this.
Thanks for your input, I will try a three star when/if we get clear skies,
Doug
|