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Telescope alignment
G'day,
Ran into an quandary last night when I finished up for the evening. I wanted to get up really early to get another look at Jupiter before the sun rose.
Have just picked up a Celestar 8 and had set it up for a practice session. I easily setup and calibrated the RA setting circle at the beginning. I ran into trouble when I wanted to leave the telescope out and aligned for a certain time in the morning, wanting to save time before having to run off to the train. When looking up the coordinates, I found that I could not rotate the RA far enough to put the marker at the right RA value for in the morning (I also need some insight on what values to use when getting coordinates from Stellarium).
My question is... is the RA alignment only good for the time you start and in order for things to continue to work you have to follow along and let the mount rotate naturally until the next target rises? The specific task was... I was finishing up around 23:30 and wanted the telescope set for 04:30 in the morning.
I do remember reading something about having to flip an axis once you cross the meridian. Is that the reason why I could not rotate the mount to the correct RA setting? Could I have simply rotated the RA setting circle by 5 hours? That doesn't seem right but I have to ask.
Another side question... on this particular mount (forked Alt/Az with a wedge), does the setting circle rotate with the mount or stay in one position as the mount rotates (this seems most logical to me)?
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