How to align scope in stellarium....

[Guest Philmarriott]

Evening. Sorry about all the amateur questions but once I polar align my mount (heq5 pro) how does stellarium know what my actual scope is pointing at? If I'm using the hand controller I would do a three star alignment but how do you align your imaging scope if you have no handset connected? Using eqmod and stellarium obviously

Thanks guys.

Phil

[+Ibbo]

You do a sync in the planetarium program or better still a number of syncs

 

I prefer Cartes de Ciel btw

Edited June 29, 2014 by Ibbo

[Guest Philmarriott]

I see. How do you sync it? Is it ctrl 3?

[+Ibbo]

don't use stellarium so I don't know

 

 

have a look at the eqmod u tube vids it might be in there

 

hopefully somebody on here knows

[red dwalf]

polar align your mount first Phil, then once done you can start your programs either CDC or Stellarium, click on the star you want to slew to and press Ctrl and 1 at the same time and it`ll slew to the star, when you look through the scope or imaging camera it will be off alittle or in my case alot, then if your imaging put the red cross hair reticule on in APT and 1 or 2 second exposures to show up the star, then centre the star in the frame using the N E S W buttons on the EQmod program selecting the correct rates 1,2,3,4, 3 and 4 might be too fast. then in Stellarium you`ll see that the star you selected and the scope target will not be aligned, to align them press Ctrl and 3 then the scope target will move to the selected star, simples.

great if you have a permanent fixed set up as the more you do the better your map of the sky will be and slewing to other targets will be better aligned, but if you move the mount or loosen the clutches and move the RA or DEC you`ll need to do it all over again.

but if you are moving the mount about it`s better to set up and polar align as normal then pick a star near to the object you want to image, slew to it, centre it, sync it, then slew to the target, it won`t be that far off, you may need to slightly centre it, but once done and you have started guiding you`ll not need to align on any other stars so no need for 2 or 3 star alignments.

once you have the hang of it, it becomes so simple to use, only took me 2 years to get the basics. L.O.L. 

[Guest Philmarriott]

Nice one rob. Think I just need to get out there and practice. So once the mount is polar aligned and you start stellarium I thinks the home or start position is also with the scope at Polaris too or just slightly off?

[red dwalf]

yep, it thinks the mount is already polar aligned so that`s where you need to start from.