noobie failed

so i took out my scope today and wow...epic fail.

first of all i couldnt get the scope (celestron cpc800 gps) aligned using its SkyAlign function. (though now i know i can use solar system align and just use the moon to aligh it).

I guess the trouble i had with its SkyAlign function was finding 3 bright objects in the sky. i mean how do you determine that? there were billions of stars out. and even when it said alignment was successful, it couldnt even slew to the moon accurately.

not only that, while transporting my scope, i knocked the finderscope's screw and broke it in half, now my finderscope is useless because it cant be adjusted. (anyone know where i can get a new one?)

ahhh, another time and day to try again.

Bummer about breaking a bit off it. I had a similar issue with mine. I had bought it used and one of the leavers broke off in transit in the mail. Luckily for me it's still usable.

You're going to need to get to know some of the brighter stars to use for alignment. I'm still learning, getting to know the more useful and easily recognisable ones now. Try getting a planisphere or download one of the many free planetarium type programs like Cartes du Ciel or Stellarium etc.

If you are aligning to the correct stars and it can't find the moon, are your location, time/date and timezone settings correct?

I wouldn't think that attempting to align off something as large and moving as fast as the moon would be a reliable way of aligning. Reckon you should persist with recommended guide stars.

Hopefully someone that actually knows what they're talking about will be along soon. I'm still making more mistakes than success myself at the moment. Reading, learning, practising...

Hi Kaitanium,

I don't know what level you are at, but here is a quick checklist to help you.

1. Know your stars. The main constellations and bright stars.

2. Make sure your tripod or pier is level.

3 . Are you in alt-az fork mount mode or is it an equatorial mount? If you are equatorial, you will need to be polar aligned first. This is all manual baby, no electronics can do this for you.

4. Make sure you hhave entered the correct date/time into the controller

5. Make sure you have entered daylight savings or not depending on your location.

6. Check the co-ordinates of your location on a map (google earth should be close enough) and cross reference them with what the GPS function tells you it is.

7. FIX THAT FINDERSCOPE. Your astronomy life will be miserable without it. Especially if you don't yet know your stars.

As I said, I don't know where you are at with experience, I might be telling you to suck eggs, but sometimes people miss the most simple and obvious things when they are staring you in the face. (Speaking from lots of goofy experience here).

Hope this helps mate.

Baz.

I'd certainly second (or third) what others have said about learning your way around the night sky. I bought a simple pocket book with all the constellations and the star names. Certainly helps when trying to do built-in alignment routines. (Not that it generally works for me...often need to be able to align on stars both east and west of the zenith (straight up), but I can only aim east!)

www.neave.com/planetar​ium is a good on-line guide to the constellations. Hover the mouse over a star and it'll tell you the name of it, (if it's bright enough), and what constellation it's in. Worth having this loaded up on the PC inside should you need to pop in and confirm and few things. Or, if you can, take it outside and it'll show you exactly what you should be seeing in the sky.

A.S.I.G.N. Observatory wrote in post #7081089
Hi Kaitanium,

I don't know what level you are at, but here is a quick checklist to help you.

1. Know your stars. The main constellations and bright stars.

2. Make sure your tripod or pier is level.

3 . Are you in alt-az fork mount mode or is it an equatorial mount? If you are equatorial, you will need to be polar aligned first. This is all manual baby, no electronics can do this for you.

4. Make sure you hhave entered the correct date/time into the controller

5. Make sure you have entered daylight savings or not depending on your location.

6. Check the co-ordinates of your location on a map (google earth should be close enough) and cross reference them with what the GPS function tells you it is.

7. FIX THAT FINDERSCOPE. Your astronomy life will be miserable without it. Especially if you don't yet know your stars.

As I said, I don't know where you are at with experience, I might be telling you to suck eggs, but sometimes people miss the most simple and obvious things when they are staring you in the face. (Speaking from lots of goofy experience here).

Hope this helps mate.

Baz.

uh i gotta go but ill answer these fast so others can help me out! ill read the rest of the comments later...

1. yes i know my stars, got a planisphere with me

2. level as can be

3. fork, stand cpc800 setup

4. yep its entered correctly

5. gotta check for that, i thought it be ok guess not, maybe this is my prob

6. mm maybe kinda hard, but ill try that

7. yes must fix, life quite hard right now. emailed celestron for a screw, dont know where else i can get it, maybe i can substitute using another screw...

im a total noob. as noob as you can get.

Check to see that the scope is not set to Polar mode when you're actually using it Alt/Az. This will throw everything off.

Is the scope even close to the star it's looking for during alignment? Does it show what stars it's looking for or just slew to each then tell you it's done.

Those little nylon screws for the finder can be found at places like Home Depot & Lowe's too. I replaced all of mine (Meade) for cheap.

Keep at it!

i think my finderscope being unadjustable without that screw didnt help with my problem

i just used the main eyepiece to find three random bright objects and just had the scope find its location using those. do i really need to know what stars is what? the instructions said i did...just random 3 bright objects thats all

Rather than use three random stars, can you choose which stars to use for alignment? If you can choose three that you actually know, it might make it easier to confirm correct alignment.

If you can choose, also make sure that at least one of them is in a different part of the sky to the other two. If all three are dairly close together, your alignment will be less accurate.