Nexstar 6e and tracking mount - alignment

[advgt2 (Antony)]

is it possible to set the longitude and latitude readings for a permanent location?

I am having trouble with the 3 star alignment system and am looking for an easier way to set up the telescope so i can view the planets and moons as they (and us) move.

i am very new to this hobby and had no idea how quickly these things move across the dark sky.

Thank you for sharing your experience.

Antony

[alw50 (Andrew)]

For moon and planets, I usually use the single point Solar System alignment option, which is quick to do and tracks quite well. That's one of the alignment options in the handset menus.

You can enter latitude and longitude, usually by city name. It then remembers the setting. In fact, it's so long since I did it I can't remember exactly how! IIRC it asks for this information at the beginning of the alignment procedure.

The best place to look these things up is Michael Swanson's excellent site https://www.nexstarsite.com/

I can recommend his book as well.

Regards, Andrew

[advgt2 (Antony)]

Andrew - thanks for your suggestions. I will follow through with them. Antony

[powerslide (Patrick)]

I usually use CPWI via a usb connected device. However I also use the Wedge. What problem do you have with three star? you doing sky align with any 3 stars? I am also on the coast and before the wedge I would use sky align just pick 3 stars in different parts of the sky. Achernar, Fomalhaut and Vega while it was still up would be regulars. Also, when you do have a planet centred in the eyepiece you can also sync to that to have better tracking. Make sure you have the mount level before you start sky align though.

[alw50 (Andrew)]

I've now found it necessary to remind myself of exactly how to enter latitude and longitude, so I thought I'd pass on the information.

Last week we were at a star party 400km from home, and I decided to do a quick solar system alignment to scan the planets. At which point I realized that I'd need to change the lat/long settings, which I tried to do from memory and failed. I didn't feel inclined to waste time on a beautiful night fumbling through the menus in the dark, so I reverted to manual operation.

Now that we are back home, I've worked out how to do it.

Under Menu, you will find two relevant sections.

One is View Time-Set. Here you can inspect all the current settings.

The other is Scope Setup -> Setup Time-Set.
Under this item, you will find
City Database and
Custom Site.

For Australia, the city database is rather limited, limited to capital cities and a couple of other places.
But under Custom Site, you can enter precise latitude and longitude settings.

These settings persist across sessions. So subsequently you just need to enter date and time every time you restart the scope.

In future, I'm going to try to remember to do this at home inside before we go away!

Hope that helps, Andrew

[Dexx]

If you have some astronomy apps on your phone, you can get the current lat and long from that. Also, if you enter your address into Google maps, you can get lat and long from URL listed in your browser - the numbers after the @