CGEM / NexStar Initial Setup...

[jmelquist (Jason)]

Sorry in advance - i'm missing something obvious, kudos to the first person to point out the "you dummy" fix i'm missing!

Just upgraded all my astro software/firmware/drivers (knew it would be a pain, but with full moon out, figured I had some time...) Anyhow, after updating to the latest CGEM firmware (both Motors and Hand Controler), my scope is completely disoriented. I polar aligned it and it has the correct home position and reports 90/90 degrees as it should. I've confirmed it has the right time/date and Lat/Lon. However, when I go to align it, it slews to the NE horizon and tells me to center Vega (wich was just west of zenith at the time!) Also, when I manually slew the scope to a target and tell PHD to guide it calibrates fine but after calibration, the RA rockets off course immediately (Dec seems fine). I can correct for this by turning on "flip calibration." I'm wondering if it's a meridian issue. My setup can only shoot the western sky so my scope is always pointing to zenith or westward of that. (I'm in Minneapolis, MN by the way). Does this sound like the problem? what/how should i config NexStar to tell it this? or is it a different problem? I'll keep fighting with it, but i know i'm missing something obvious... thanks for any suggestions/help!

-Jas

[Allan_L (Allan)]

Hi Jas,
Initial thoughts - sounds like a time thing.
Did you remember to include a daylight saving adjustment?

Or maybe enter +5 instead of -5 for a UT offset?

Either that or the telescope is mounted the wrong way around !

Good luck with it, I know I had a similar problem once, but can't quite remember what caused it.

[jmelquist (Jason)]

Thanks Allan,
yea, I thought I double/triple checked lat/long/time, but it is acting like that, I agree - i'll have to confirm again. Interesting question on having the DEC rotated 180degs...i'm pretty sure I checked the Key Marks, but I'll add that to the list of things to check again when I get the chance.

[Visionoz (Bill)]

Also did you:
1) Reset to factory defaults after updating? and
2) swap your cables? ie are you sure RA is actually RA & DEC is actually DEC?

Had a similar experience recently when helping someone with a new setup and missed checking that the cables were correct - coz' the bloke is an engineer and I assumed "wrongly" that it was done right! (pun intended )
Took me more than a night's worth to twig that the cables were incorrectly socketed!

HTH
Cheers
Bill

[jmelquist (Jason)]

Thanks Visionoz and Alan - I figgured it out!!!

turns out that i had set everything up correctly but when I was connecting my iPad's SkySafari to the mount via WiFiScope (from Main Sequence) it was overwriting my mount's known location!!! well, actually it was overwriting the Logitude's WEST indicator with EAST!!! from that point on my mount thinks it's in western Mongolia!!! even power cycling the mount wouldn't clear that! I had to hit UNDO 4x's while in the Alignment task to reset my Lat/Lon to WEST! No wonder my GoTo's were off! I setup Stellarium to control my mount (instead of SkySafari/WiFiScope) and it worked perfectly!

thanks much for your suggestions!
-Jas

[Allan_L (Allan)]

Thanks for the update Jason.