Telescope Star Alignment - Using Your SynScan Hand Controller
Hello and welcome.
My name is Doug Hubbell and today weíre going to talk about star alignment with your hand
controller.
Arrow keys up here on the pad, you have numbered key pads all through here, and up & down arrows
right here at the bottom that allow you to scroll through the different menus.
Iím going ahead and zoom in.
Before you get started you should make sure your scales are set to zero.
Here are the scales that I was talking about when you get ready to start alignment.
When it says Start from park pos.?
You would select one.
Next it shows the version of the software thatís on there, you go ahead and press the
enter key.
Then it comes up with a warning Never bla bla bla look at the sun, we all know that.
And then you put in your location where at, your GPS location.
Put that information in, you go ahead and press enter.
You select your time zone; you should be familiar with your time zone.
Then itís going to ask you the date of when youíre starting your imaging session, todayís
date is the 18th, Iíll use the arrow keys here at the top and get to the eight, press
eight, and thatís the correct date here.
And Iíll press enter.
Now the time is really important!
You should take some notes on the time.
Some scopes have the ability to take time from your computer, but as you know, the earth
is spinning, and itís based on the time of the rotation to make an alignment.
Myself, I use a watch that has an atomic time clock in it, and gives me the precise second.
I can easily get the time correctly.
For this demonstration purpose Iíll just go ahead put in 20:10, which is basically
8:10 in the evening, and Iíll press enter.
Next it will prompt you with the time.
Go ahead and press enter again.
Enter Here.
This gives you a little prompt of the Polaris clock.
Go ahead and keeping pressing enter.
This is the part you want to begin your alignment and when you first start, youíre going to
say yes, I want to begin my alignment.
Youíll press one.
And the method of star alignment, I prefer the two start alignment method.
I find thatís the easiest one to use, with the combination of using polar finder scope,
this is a very accurate method to use.
In order to change it, remember, I used those down arrow keys down at the bottom of the
hand controller.
Iím using the down arrow key, ok it says one, itís not one I want two, If you accidentally
hit it too far, keep on pressing that down arrow key at the bottom of the keypad.
Now remember, Iím not talking about these arrow keys here, Iím talking about the arrow
keys down at the very bottom here, thatís what changes the values inside of the prompts
there.
Letís go back here.
To two star alignment method.
Iím going to select enter.
And itís going to ask for which star.
Now this of course Iím doing during the day time, so I donít have these stars out in
front of me, but we can still go through the steps on how to get your alignment done.
So Iím going to say go ahead and make Sirius my first star.
Listen to the mount if you can.
You can hear how quite it is.
Itís slewing right now to Sirius.
This is where you would bring in your finder scope once it stops and you would get your
finder scope to initially find the star.
And after your finder scope has it aligned then you take an eyepiece to your telescope.
Make sure itís centered right there on the center of the telescope for your alignment.
Makes a little beep.
Itís done.
Now what it asks you here is it says Use Directional Keys To Center Object.
What that is referring to is these keys right here.
Those are the directional keys.
So you would use these keys to go around to center it first in your finder scope.
Now one of the things thatís a trick you need to know About is changing the rate.
Now you see that button right here?
It says two and also rate there like combo keys.
So what I want to do, I want to change the rate, if you go and press the rate button
now.
Youíll notice itís probably on a pretty low rate.
Letís see here.
Press Two.
And it says rate = 2.
Now thatís not going to get you moving around very fast.
So what I like to do, especially with my finder scope getting that first initial alignment,
is Iíll take it, hit that two button or the rate button, and then change it to six.
Then you press the enter key.
Now your rate is six.
So when you press these adjustment keys, right here to slew to it.
It will go a little bit faster to align your target into your finder scope.
Sometimes even changing that rate button to something even a little higher than six may
come in handy, but also when youíre doing fine tune ups there, getting right on the
star, you may want to change that rate to something a little bit smaller.
So now weíre going to pretend weíve already got the object aligned in our telescope and
weíre going to say enter.
Then itís going to say Chose 2nd star.
BTW, the stars it chooses in the night are very bright you can select most anything that
it points to.
Just take your finder scope and look in the general direction where the telescope is pointing
and youíll see a bright star, you donít have to know the names of these stars, because
they come up very bright and theyíre pretty darn close to where your finder scope.
Now weíre back to this same prompt.
Weíre going to use the directional keys to align the star first in the finder scope.
If we the time in the first alignment, on that first star, and we took the adjustment
screws on the finder scope, after weíve aligned the telescope to nail that center, you be
right on target pretty much.
What weíll do, weíll use the keys and align the star first in the finder scope.
Then after itís aligned in the finder scopes, then we go to the telescope with an eyepiece,
usually an illuminated reticle, maybe something like a 5 or 10mm illuminated reticle on the
telescope will give you some really nice precision there.
Then you press enter.
And it tells you Alignment Successful.
From this point on, youíve aligned the telescope you can just press enter.
From this point you can start using the buttons to find your targets.
Like letís just say for instance, letís go down here, and Iím just going to say,
letís see ìMî, press the ìMî button.
And then that should bring it up over here and it does.
Letís say 42 and you press enter.
Gives you the details of it, press enter again, View Object?
I donít know why it does that again, but yeah, and now it going to go slew to M42.
So now youíre on the target.
One of the things that I do sometimes is, it may be close to the center, but you might
have to use these directional arrow keys to maybe align it perfectly in your CCD frame.
Then after you done through imaging session.
One of the things you can do, which is very helpful, let me show you this right here,
press the escape key, this like after your imaging session is done, and you going to
call it a night.
What youíre going to do is youíre going to use these down arrow keys, up and down
arrow keys down at the bottom.
And Iíll show you Iíll back to the menu so you can see it.
Use these keys and Iím going to find the Utility Function.
Remember this, if you were going to just turn your telescope off now that wouldnít be very
good.
What you want to do is you want to Park the scope, so itís here under the Utility Function.
The way I got to that was I pressing the escape key a couple of times to get to the menu options,
then I pressed the up down arrow keys down at the bottom of the keypad, I got to the
Utility Function, then next Iím going to press enter.
Then it got some different menu items under here, but use the down arrow keys down at
the bottom of the keypad again, and thereís the one that says Park Scope.
What you do is press enter.
It says Park to home position.
Enter again.
Then itís going to slew back to home and youíll be able to turn off your telescope.
Itís parked so the next time you get ready to go, youíve already got a star alignment,
you could just probably pick up and go on to the next target the next day.
Timing is so critical on here, that if youíre off a few seconds, then itís going be off
a little bit of your position.
You might need to do a star alignment the next day, but make sure you park the scope.