Quote:
Originally Posted by icytailmark
i have a gps in my car, can i use those figures from it? i use cold start every time. i put the mount in park position first 00 on both axis. I have mount lattitude to the same as the hand control setting. I have the leg on the counterweight tube headed towards south. How many bright stars do i need to do for goto to work fairly accurate? I want to use my computer to do the slewing but i cant seem to get the mount to accept commands from the computer. I use the USB driver and Ascom 5.5 software. Im probably taking too long to line up the bright stars in the finderscope and main scope. Its very hard to do it quickly with a c14.
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You really should join Yahoo! Gemini-II group. The G2 software is not finished and they keep a running list of what is and isn't ready. The G2 comments I've made here and elsewhere come from reading the group. I'm a G1 owner.
The GPS in the car would be close enough. Be really careful with the signs on the latitude and longitude. You might have to toggle the +- a couple of times to get it to save correctly. This is on the "to be fixed" list.
I would stick to setting the time in UTC. Local time and DST just confuses things.
If the finder and scope agree, you should be able to just use the finder to get your "bright stars". At least three on one side of the meridian each separated by 15 deg or more and then at least on on the other side of the meridian. Multi star alignment is also on the "to be finished" list but you might as well get into practice.
Do you have a reticule eyepiece? It is very hard to guess whether the object in a regular eyepiece is really centered. One good method is to make up an alignment target.
Take a sheet of paper with two dots the same distance apart as the centerlines of the scope and the eyepiece. Because the dots have the same separation parallax error is minimised so you don't need the target a huge distance away.
Hang the target on a wall/fence/tree/pole a practical distance away (as little as across a wide room or down the hall can work) so the dot orientation matches the scope and finder. The dots should be as small as possible but still visible through the finder. Focus and centre the scope on its dot. Adjust the finder to its dot.
Do you have the GeminiTelescopeInstaller(1.0.18.0). exe for your Ascom? This is the newest one with G2 support.
Also I've added the "magic CWD" link to my other
post.
Andrew
