TheSkySearchers

Hi,

Haven’t been on for a while, The skies have been cloudy. That’s a bummer. However, that’s not why I’m posting.

My last astronomy session where I got my first picture of Uranus, I spent 1 hour trying to get my telescope aligned using skyalign. I was unsuccessful, and I gave up aligning the telescope and resorted to manual controls.

The problem is that when I align the telescope, it goes to some objects, but every other object I try to go, to it does not go to. Here is what I am doing:

I followed a YouTube video by celestron about how to use skyalign. I aligned to one star in the east, one star in the west, and one star in the north. The stars I aligned to were bright stars. My telescope 60% of the time said, “ALIGN FAILED.” When it DID align, I tested the alignment by going to the Andromeda galaxy. It did not work ALL times I tried.

I am currently double checking my location and date and time to see if that’s the problem.

Can someone help me figure this out?

Jared

Double check your location/time/date to include daylight savings, make sure they're all correct. If you are not using a reticle eyepiece for the alignment you should probably get one. Make sure that your final motions towards the alignment star is UP and RIGHT.

JayTee wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 7:56 pm Double check your location/time/date to include daylight savings, make sure they're all correct. If you are not using a reticle eyepiece for the alignment you should probably get one. Make sure that your final motions towards the alignment star is UP and RIGHT.

Pardon my ignorance, but why is it so important to go UP and RIGHT for the final motions?

-facepalm-

I found the problem. I wasn’t switched over to Daylight Savings. As soon as skies are clear, I will see if it works.

Jared

Up and Right gets rid of mount backlash. Depending on the mount/controller software, you should have an option in the settings in there that says something like "always approach target from the east" or similar.