Failed Gemini2 GoTos after plate solve

[pmrid (Peter)]

With lousy weather, opportunities to do much imaging have been few and far between. Which is why, when I recently fired up my observatory-mounted Gemini2/Losmandy Titan, puzzling things began to happen. I use Maxim to run everything including plate solving. But for some reason plate solves take forever now and after I finally get a solution and Sync it, if I then do a Go-To to center the object, the scope goes anywhere but. Not far away, but far enough to require another lengthy solve. And even then, Go-Tos fail in the same way.
My guess is that somewhere in the mix, there is an Epoch setting that is wrong or something of that sort. Time settings are spot on. Alignment also bang on.
I'm running out of ideas.
Peter

[alocky (Andrew lockwood)]

When was the last time you replaced the internal battery? Some of the reported symptoms of this include poor goto performance.
If you just use the hand controller to slew to a bright star how close does it get?
Cheers
Andrew.

[pmrid (Peter)]

Originally Posted by alocky

When was the last time you replaced the internal battery? Some of the reported symptoms of this include poor goto performance.
If you just use the hand controller to slew to a bright star how close does it get?
Cheers
Andrew.

Darned near bang on.
I did a PlateSolve2 on a sub from last night. It was solved and a GoTo done for EtaCarina Neb at RA 10 43 47; Dec -59 51 56. Then this sub was taken and PlateSolve2 found it at RA 10 54 07; Dec -61 07 40.3. So it was off by quite a margin. And the crazy thing is I imaged, solved and GoTo'd twice in a row just to be sure and the end position was the same.

If it was just an Epoch error, the difference should not have been more than about 1 minute in RA and 6 minutes in Dec. So this was way beyond that.

I'll just have to do some battery changing and see what happens.

Peter