Alignment LX200 Meade 16"

[Babylon5 (Shane)]

Hi, My fellow nucklehead and I are trying to setup and align a LX200 Meade 16" Pier mounted telescope. But we keep coming across issues and are nearly pulling our hair out trying to get it aligned properly. I've read so many guides and tutorials on alignment but still can't get the alignment correct.

We are most likely missing some vital step or doing some other newbie mistake when trying to set it up. But I wanted to know if there was any experienced person that lives on the north side of Brisbane that could spare some time to take a look at the setup and hopefully guide (literally) us in the correct alignment procedure? I've even prepared to pay for your time.

Thanks,
Shane.

[allan gould]

When you talk of alignment do you mean Polar align or collimation?
Its not clear from your thread.
Allan

[Babylon5 (Shane)]

Hi Allan, Sorry I meant Polar Alignment.

Well we have progressed. Managed to do a polar alignment yesterday. Even though it isn't slewing to the correct positions, the tracking is fairly good. But I think some of the issue is that we can't see Sigma Octanis directly from the observatory, so we are just assuming the scope slews correctly to the South Celestial Pole.

I changed the RA position so the forks are about 45 degrees off level. When making the forks level and doing an alignment it puts the alignment even more out. But having the forks at 45 degrees before aligning produces the alignment where only a little bit of slewing is needed to get it aligned.

Should the forks be level as in spirit leveled?

The Dec is set to 90. No idea if this is correct but it produced better results than if the OTA was leveled.

I'm awaiting a r232 to usb adapter so I can use the laptop for drift alignment. I'll assume to drift align using PHD or other software it needs to be able to communicate directly via the cable to the telescope?

Shane.

[mikerr (Michael)]

This one might help if you haven't already seen it.

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/63-454-0-0-1-0.html


Michael.

[AndrewJ]

Gday Shane

For a proper polar align, the forks/RA axle should be horizontal at the start of the process. If you have drift aligned, then you can do a "dummy" one star align, ie let it slew to Sig Oct, and then just hit enter.
When it slews to the second star, it should be reasonably close.
Needing to be 45deg off means something else is wrong within your location( longitude), Timezone or date/time/DST settings.

As to drift aligning, you can do it manually by using a reticle eyepiece, and no computer reqd. If you dont have a reticle EP, just use a std short focal length EP and defocus a brightish star until the diffraction rings almost fill up the FOV, then roughly centre it.
You can easily detect any significant drift by watching the clearances at the edges change in the DEC axis direction.

You do not need a cable to "talk" to the scope to drift align via PHD, just a camera with its cable, as when drift aligning, you send no commands to the scope, you just watch the tracking.

Andrew