hey all,
second clear night in over a week so thought i would take out my new EQ6Pro and ED80 and have a go at observing before even starting to try to take photos.
it was a bit of a disaster...
1. balanced the ED80+guidescope+finderscope+barlow+ lens and the counterweights whilst inside. disassembled the mount and scopes, moving the tripod outside.
2. I think i had the mount aligned to the South (used a piece of wood across the two back legs and rotated 11-12 degrees to the east.
3. set up the tripod to a convenient height.
4. reassembled.
5. waited until dark.
6. turned on mount and tried to do a 1-star alignment on Rigel.
This is where it went wrong. It seemed that the telescope was pointing too low and too easterly, and fine tuning with the arrow keys was just not going to get there.
7. Thought I would reset to the Home position by Parking the telescope. well, "Home" did not seem to be near the position i started in, and thought of as home.
8. Tried a 1-star alignment on Achenar. Again, the telescope pointed too low and a bit too easterly.
anyway, that's where i ended for the night.
So, questions:
A. is it possible to reset the Home position?
B. is there someone in Melbourne with an EQ6Pro (and maybe with a refractor, although not absolutely necessary) that may be able to assist me/give me some tips on getting the mount set up?
Is there a club night soon or perhaps I could visit someone/somewhere to view someone's setup? This may be a bit of a big ask... anyway, I live in Highett.
In the end it may be that I just need to balance everything better and get the mount aligned to the South more accurately.
thanks for taking the time to read this post...
any help is appreciated...
DJDD