EQ-5 GOTO (kit) - please help

Hi there,

As the topic suggests, I am humbly seekeing your advice concerning the GOTO feature of said mount. I am familiar with polar alignment, i did RTFM and all variables are correct: precise latitude adjustment, coordinates of observing site, time and date, time zone, daylight saving, tracking speed, mount was level - I even found North and Polaris :P

More seriously speaking, i did a rough polar alignment that allowed for nice round stars up to 30s exposure at 750mm focal length. So the mount was properly (if not precisely) polar aligned, that I know for a fact.

The GOTO alignment however was a complete disaster. After 3 hours of savage abuse on my motors, I came to the conclusion that the "Park Scope" feature - and its counterpart "start from park position" mean that the mount and scope must be in a certain starting position *before* begining the 3 stars alignment.

Please confirm if this is the case, and if so, what is that initial position it should be in?

thank you for your kind answers

Sorry i can't help much cause i don't have a Go-To mount yet (someday i hope) . However i have been with a few that does and they usually just point the scope towards Polaris(NP) and make sure it's level enough then hit self alignment and the scope takes over and does the rest . However i do have an EQ5 mount with tracking motors and i do manual alignment and my techniques is somewhat time consuming but i'm use to it . I Wait til i can barely see Polaris naked eye , then looking through my finder scope i position the whole scope til Polaris lines up on the N & S lines in the finderscope . Once done then i level the sope then i check in the finderscope again and line up Polaris again if needed . Once satisfied i then put in a 12mm lighted crosshair EP and point the scope toward the south and up to a star that is within 5-degs of the ecliptic line and i center it in the EP and use that star for my alignment (brightest star i can get is better ) . I use my azumith knobs and align til i have no drift then i move to a star on the east horizon thats around 20-degs latitude and i use that star for adjusting my latitude . Once it's stable i move back to the star in the south on the ecliptic (usually the same one i started with) and check for drift again . When done then i proceed to image after i have done some observing and choosing my DSO or planet i'm interested in . All this is the "Old Hard Way of PA" but before Go-To this was the "ONLY" way . But i have fun for the night and i feel i have accomplished a great deal of satisfaction when i center Saturn for example and it stays perfect center for hours ! Sorry for a long story here .

However someone with Go-To experience will be along and hopefully be helpful to you !

Hey Ron,

I must say your method is quite professional and although it may appear laborious, I think the results are well worth it. I am not a fan of GOTO, and am used to doing things myself... but aligning only involved a rough compass pointing and several (loving) kicks in the legs of the tripod for a avery variable perfection (i was shooting with 400mm focal, very forgiving).

That being said, the mount was properly aligned and the GOTO had no reason to behave the way it did.. I'm very clueless. If the God of Rain (he's Swiss) allows it, I'll try again tonight.

I never had a problem with my EQ5 when I had one. I'd set it up with the mount in the "Parked" position, (i.e.with the telescope pointing to the North Central Pole), and my two or three star-align would generally help me calculate how inaccurate the setup was. (With mine it wouldn't automatically compensate for errors...it would just say how many degrees out the mount was, so I would then adjust it and align again.)

However, I must admit, sometimes after a session I would tell it to park, or find something, and it would miss. I put that down to the fact that sometimes I would loosen the locking bolts and adjust the orientation slightly by hand, which the mount obviously wouldn't recognise, so therefore it would be out of alignment. (If that makes sense.)

After I sold it the buyer told me the GOTO would hardly work at all. It would track okay and in Right Ascension it would find objects accurately, but in declination it would sometimes be 40 or 50 degrees out!!

Can I suggest something fundamental, and please don't take offense? Only because I did this myself and took me ages to figure out the reason why the GOTO was out despite everything else being (what I thought was) correct.

Check your date. My GOTO date format requires MM/DD/YYYY, but being Australian I see dates and habitually enter DD/MM/YYYY. Everything looks and appears normal but the GOTOs were way out til I set the right day and month.

Troy touches on the basic but very important set up of a GoTo mount. The mount needs specific location on the planet, date and time to be able to locate objects accurately. Setting Universal Time can be tricky as well since you need to add or subtract the correct number of hours for your location. Being off by a few minutes won't be huge but if you're off by 30 minutes or more the mount can't perform accurately. It's not unheard of of GoTo systems to default settings so it's a good idea to check them from time to time.

I'm not familiar with your mount but many GoTo systems will stay accurate throughout a night once you're able to get one object located. My previous Meade mounts were actually more accurate as the night went on and I synced objects I slewed to.

I highly recommend that you learn to drift align for long exposure work. At first it seems a bit complex but once you've done it a few times you'll get faster at it and the accuracy of your tracking will confirm it's time well spent. At first it would take me 45 minutes to an hour to fine tune with drift alignment but after learning it I am able to get it done in about 20 minutes, 30 if I really want to tighten it up for focal length of 800mm.

Here's a link to a great tutorial/demo.
http://www.petesastrop​hotography.com/

Click on Polar Alignment > Drift Align at the left.

Nighthound wrote in post #11203983
Here's a link to a great tutorial/demo.
http://www.petesastrop​hotography.com/

Great link Steve ! never seen that one but i bookmarked it anyway . The manual way is exactly how i do PA manually . It's definitly a winner ! Just wish i had a control with Alt included on it .

Hi and thank you for your kind words.

Troy - you raise a valid point. However, if one can mistake April 11th for November 4th, the 28th of October can never be mistaken for... the 10th day of the 28th month

I've tried again in my living room - seems to be okay. It points within a degree or so of the 3 alignment stars if scope is strated from park position. I've chacked alt/az coordinates with the compass and it's reasonably precise.

One doubt that subsists - the mount is asking to enter time / time zone / daylight saving information. I suspect I have to enter local time (and not UT), and based on lat/long coordinates of the observing point, together with daylight saving / timezone the mount will know where it should point?

More info when i'll get a chance to actually point it at the sky.

Thank you again for your help

Wouldn't surprise me if it still wants Universal Time actually. Certainly worth trying if it still doesn't line up right.

Manual says local time, but I'll have to doubleckeck.