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Trouble-shooting polar alignment on HEQ5Pro
Hi all,
I thought I'd post this for the benefit of people who like me are having a struggle with polar alignment on goto GEM's.
I first got the scope about 6 weeks ago, and have been learning through trial and error, which has been a combination of fun and frustration.
The first problem is that the Synscan software version loaded on the hand-controller (Version 1.7) is hopeless, and cannot be used to do an alignment.
Fortunately, good folks on here like Steffen, told me about this. Updating the software is fiddly if you have a Mac, because you need a USB serial adapter cable (e.g. Tripplite Keyspan USA-19HS adapter), and because the software is not Mac compatible, you need to run a parallel windows system, or partition your Mac to run windows. So, its painful if you don't have a windows computer. As an aside, I'm amazed than the handset is sold with software that is not fit for purpose. Retailers should address this problem!
Secondly, the procedure for a rough polar alignment is outlined here on IIS, and its a great guide, but don't place your compass within a metre of the mount to get True south, because the motor in the mount is magnetised (D'oh).
I was getting quite frustrated trying to work out how to use the polar scope on the mount to improve the alignment, but its a waste of time. With the new software, a rough alignment to the SCP is enough - just use the 3-star alignment function in Synscan.
Now, the REAL trap is that after entering all your position data and time, and beginning a 3 star alignment, the slewing speed of the mount is nice and fast to track to the position the scope thinks the star should be, but when it asks you to use the control to centre the star, it slews very slowly (default speed 3), which is too slow to centre the star (the computer does not seem to compensate for this time). So, after many frustrating attempts, I increased the speed to slew for centering the star to 6, and instead of it taking 3-4 minutes, it took 10-15 seconds, and the computer can now find objects in the sky!
Many thanks to Steffen who helped me here with my problems.
Cheers,
Luke
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