Help aligning my eq mount

[Mack41]

I know this is going to be something really obvious that I’ve missed but I’m having serious issues trying to allying my celestron advanced gt mount
I’m using it in my back garden and if I use the auto align the stars it wants to align to are usually the other side of my house which means it’s looking at a brick wall
Is there some way of picking the stars I use to align the mount ?
I also have an alt azimuth Mount and I can choose practically any stars to allign that

[Lady Fraktor]

You should be able to pick your alignment stars depending on which programming your mount has.
What version is in the hand controller?

At worst you should be able to do a 2 star alignment and pick your stars, then refine with a bit of drift aligning.

[Mack41]

You should be able to pick your alignment stars depending on which programming your mount has.
What version is in the hand controller?

At worst you should be able to do a 2 star alignment and pick your stars, then refine with a bit of drift aligning.

I havnt a clue what version the hand controller is, this is such a steep learning curve

[JayTee]

Instead of using Auto align, use Auto 3-star align. This will allow you to choose the stars for your alignment.

Cheers,
JT

[Lady Fraktor]

Go into the utilities menu and it will have a spot called version.
It should show HC and MC program numbers.

[Mack41]

Thanks for all the help, I’ll check tomorrow

[russmax]

Mack,
When you are aligning, you can use the up and down buttons (9 & 3, I think) to choose other stars from a menu, if the 1st suggestion is not visible.
--Russmax

[Graeme1858]

Mack,
When you are aligning, you can use the up and down buttons (9 & 3, I think) to choose other stars from a menu, if the 1st suggestion is not visible.
--Russmax

If you can't see the alignment star suggested pick one in the sky you can see then scroll through the list as Russ suggests until you see your chosen star listed, select it and the telescope will slew to it.

Good luck

Regards

Graeme

[Mack41]

Ok, thanks for your help, that worked
But I still can’t allign the mount, I have it dead on Polaris to start
My coordinates are 53,28,28 N, 002,05,05W, I’ve set the time and date, all good
I choose my first alignment star and ff it goes, now I take it it should be somewhere near but it’s always way off
After moving the scope with the handset quite a lot on all 3 stars it says alignment successfull but when I choose something to GoTo again it’s way off
Even if I go back to any of the stars I’ve aligned to

[JayTee]

Are the clutches for both axes tight?

JT

[Mack41]

Are the clutches for both axes tight?

JT

Yes, not Herculean tight but tight, it’s all balanced and moving nicely
I’ve updated the firmware

[Lady Fraktor]

What hand control version is yours now?
Try using a different star than Polaris for alignment, it sometimes caused issues with the ASGT mounts.

[Mack41]

What hand control version is yours now?
Try using a different star than Polaris for alignment, it sometimes caused issues with the ASGT mounts.

I forgot to look at the hand control version sorry, I’m only aligning the mount with Polaris, through the built in alignment scope, I didn’t know you could use another star ?

[Lady Fraktor]

If you are just doing the polar alignment then yes, use Polaris. It can sometimes screw up alignments when choosing it as a alignment star though.
If your mount has ASPA then you actually do not need to use Polaris, just set it up roughly pointing north and run the alignment.

[Graeme1858]

Should you be entering -(minus)002,05,05W as you are west of the Greenwich meridian?

Regards

Graeme

[Mack41]

Should you be entering -(minus)002,05,05W as you are west of the Greenwich meridian?

Regards

Graeme

Good point, I’ll have a look at that when I get home but I’ve never seen plus or minus icons on the handset

[Mack41]

Ok all sorted
I did a factory reset on the handset and everything seems fine now
Thanks everyone for all the help