whiiir whiiiiiir buzz beep - Page 2

davidpretorius · #21 13-01-2007, 11:09 PM

i can imagine that it could be an absolute pain in the arse.

and then tomoroow, you go out and within 5 minutes you go "there it is"

aaaarrrgghhh!

ballaratdragons (Ken) · #22 13-01-2007, 11:14 PM

Yep Davo,

I fluke it with my huge EQ, and the piddly little EQ1, but the EQ6 has the aid of a polarscope and I still can't find it

I gave it a 'close enough' trial run and it didn't GoTo anything on alignment stars. Not even close!

Oh well, I'll give it another hour or so before I give up for the night. Work tomorrow

sejanus (Gavin) · #23 13-01-2007, 11:14 PM

ken, unless you want to precisely aligned for photography it doesn't matter. just point it as close as you can and then do a 2 or 3 star align. you don't need a precise polar aligment for goto functionality.

one trick i did to find octans once was do a 2 star align, and then do a goto on one of the stars in octans.

ballaratdragons (Ken) · #24 13-01-2007, 11:15 PM

Hmmmm, worth a try Sej

Thanks

Going back out to try it. Back later.

sejanus (Gavin) · #25 13-01-2007, 11:21 PM

btw ken don't worry if it's initial guess of the alignment locations is a fair way out.

Sometimes it lands with in a few degrees, sometimes it's out by miles. I just use my telrad and line them all up!

h0ughy (David) · #26 13-01-2007, 11:25 PM

ken do the compass trick and align from that, making sure the mount was level, then you should get close. drift align Ken, use the force............

Doug · #27 14-01-2007, 12:13 AM

My EQ6 has a few bugs in it, but overall not a bad bit of hardware.
I'm lucky I guess in that mine is on a permanent pier mount. After inputting all the data including GPS time, I do a 1 star alignment, (Sirius) and it puts Sirius on the DSI chip first go.(Not dead center, but there) Guiding with a web cam and Guide Dog for over an hour saw only 2 brief pulses to the south dec correction; I guess it is Polar aligned ok, these were not evenly spaced in time so might have been atmospherics rather than Dec drift. Of course there are several East/West corrections due to PE.
But it doesn't play back PEC!

Nor can I PEC train with the guider; gotta do it the hard way

. PEC probably doesn't matter that much if I'm auto guiding, but the less work the guider has to do the better I think.
After a few different mess ups, I loose Sirius from the roll of Objects. The first controller did that, but its a bit of a worry that the new one looses it too. There might be other stars that go missing in action, Sirius is the only one I know of. The other thing that seems amiss is in searching for a star object, the thing jumps to the next, or was it the previous star in the list. eg I want to slew to Mintaka, select it press enter and the display has moved to another m star. Press esc and try again and it will work the second time; this has happened repeatedly so it is not a one off. Doesn't seem to do this with Messier, NGC or Planet gotos, only stars.
Enjoy your EQ6s

Doug · #28 14-01-2007, 12:22 AM

I forgot to mention; I set the pier up as level as I can. The bubble on the mount is off at about 1 o'clock as you face the control panel.
I did not notice any shift in azimuth as I adjusted Altitude or visaversa, which suggests that the bubble level in the mount is only there to fill up the hole. The little pointer on the altitude scale has the capacity for a small amount of adjustment, but not much as it is set in a recess. Mine as supplied is indicating an altitude of about 36 deg. for a latitude of 34d 06'.

sejanus (Gavin) · #29 14-01-2007, 12:34 AM

doug i have the exact same issue regarding naming of stars dissapearing, and reappearing as you say.

ballaratdragons (Ken) · #30 14-01-2007, 12:48 AM

I have just been out the back yard and had a blast!

Houghy, I don't own a spirit level (must get one!) but I used my digital compass.

Well, after lining up on the 'area' of SCP I did a 2 star alignment on Beteguese and Acrux. After that, everything I asked it to GoTo was just on the periphery of the finderscope, then I centred them in the EP by the directional arrows

I was asking it of a lot, as I wasn't polar aligned and I was using a Pentax 9mm in the ED80

But, the good news is that everything I went to was soooooo close to being in the FOV.

I am very pleased Mr. Houghy

ballaratdragons (Ken) · #31 14-01-2007, 12:51 AM

Hmmmmm, silly me

I just re-checked my alignment stars in Cartes du Ciel.

I asked it to align on Acrux but I actually aligned the scope to Gacrux!!!!

I thought Acrux was the top one in the Crux

That might account for some of the error

iceman (Mike) · #32 14-01-2007, 06:24 AM

Excellent news Ken.. can't wait to have my first play!

h0ughy (David) · #33 14-01-2007, 09:09 AM

Glad its working Ken

acropolite (Phil) · #34 14-01-2007, 09:19 AM

Ken the goto will probably improve out of sight once you get a decent alignment. My LX will put objects in the centre 1/3rd of the FOV at 76x mag, so I would imagine your EQ6 would achieve similar accuracy on goto once properly aligned.

ballaratdragons (Ken) · #35 14-01-2007, 11:16 PM

re: trouble finding SCP

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidpretorius

and then tomoroow, you go out and within 5 minutes you go "there it is"

aaaarrrgghhh!

I went out 20 mins after packing up last night and there it was!!!!!

ballaratdragons (Ken) · #36 14-01-2007, 11:31 PM

Vingo, how are you going with your new set-up???????

ving (David) · #37 15-01-2007, 09:57 AM

hi ken, glad you asked

went out last night to a dark site (yes on a school night!) with some MAS guys. When i got there it was almost dark, just light enough to read my compass. I looked at the ground and said "looks pretty flat", so i didnt bother leveling, then got my compas out and set the mount about 10 deg east of south. In my haste I almost put the ota on before the counterweights

anyhow once set up i got my GPS out to get teh co-ords and entered them, did a 2 star alignment on aldebaran and some star in carina (Mia-something). I found that when it was slewing to these stars it was out by quite a bit so i had to use the arrows to center them in my 9mm ep (need EP with crosshairs).
Once this was done I found that it centered objects fiarly well in the 9mm (out about 1/3 from teh center of the EP). not bad for a quick align. I haent used the polar alignment scope yet.

over all happy

slewed to a few ngcs i have never seen before... and a hint, thors helmet is naught but an averted vision smudge in a 8" scope

ballaratdragons (Ken) · #38 21-01-2007, 05:14 PM

Now for an update please, Vingo the Dingo.

As I have no sky to look at still, how is your 'GoTo' GoTo'ing?

Any better accuracy yet?
Seen any new objects?
Getting better at setting it up?
Thoughts, suggestions, reviews?