Telescope Star Alignment - Using Your SynScan Hand Controller

thank you for a great video

Is your surname really HUBBLE?!?!?!

I have a problem that no matter how good I try to polar align, it never comes even close to any of the stars during the normal star alignment. Like, often up to 30 degrees off. I've tried pretty much everything, please help me D:

Sorry if the question is stupid but do you have to Polar Align the mount even when you will do visual observation? Will the tracking work good?

You saved me from madness! I was reading the synscan book with a big "WTF!" look on my face. Your how to broke it down very nicely indeed. Big thanks from a complete n00b :D

Some great info here. Your channel has helped so many people enjoy astronomy and astrophotography. Keep up the great work Doug!

this explains so much... i wasnt starting it on 0 before aligning >_< ohwell. Thanks very much for the tips! Now i just need to figure out how to use barlows/lenses and magnification better/properly haha

nice movies man!! i learn allot. thanks.

I have a couple of questions and the manual on the V4 hand controller isn't great. 1. Just to be sure... do you have to do polaris as your first star? I'm located in a place where the neighbors house blocks out all my northern exposure. 2. Once you would then do alignment on two other stars, then, like in your video you go to M41 and you see it. Does the mount automatically start to track or is there another button to push to start that process?

Stupid question, maybe, but when you start the alignment...say for the very first time...isn't the starting position of the tube of importance? Say I've managed to set up scope using Polaris. I then want to align it using 2 or thre stars. When I choose the first star...must I know which one it is in the sky??

Thanks for your all great vids..I have a question pls.Which one of alignments ( Star alignment OR Polar alignment ) must I do first ?BR,,

hi, is it harmful for the mount to shut it down without "parking" it? I just got my first CGEM mount, and I couldn't find out how to park it, so I just turned it off, and I noticed a small screw that used be to at a place and it's not anymore, so I'm a bit worried. I got it used without a manual
thanks in advance :)

Thanks for this. It's been a few years since I've used my scope (including the EQ6 PRO mount) and I wasn't too sure if I'd been using it correctly back then. This re-assures me that I was. The only thing I wasn't doing was parking my scope, but I don't have a permenant setup, so the mount/scope was getting disassembled every viewing night.

One question though - you didn't mention the rate when tracking. I could never figure this out reliably myself, but I found that my mount didn't track very well at all, even with a 2 star alignment. I know I wouldn't have been totally accurate on my GPS location (I was using a weather station that's about 10km as the crow flies away from me). These days I could use my iPhone/Android phones I guess. Same with time - I use NTP on my iPhone, so time should be pretty accurate, better than what I used to use a few years back I guess.

Anyway - when using the scope for visual viewing, do I need to set the tracking rate, or will the scope do this on its own? I remember that the mount has different tracking rates (sideral, solar, lunar etc). I presume I just leave it at sideral. Like with the slewing example you gave, I presume you'd set the tracking rate to sideral 1x. Correct? I'm looking at getting back into the hobbit a bit more as a form of relieving work stress and just want to make sure that I'll be doing things right.

PS yes, I did level my scope and point it to solar North, rather than magnetic north (well, as close as I could get by manual methods).

me again need help again got a new telescope but i can not get my eyepiece projection kit to work (at all) there is nothing showing up on screen ive can get it to work with a extension tube just using the camera (no eyepieces). but with any eyepiece or barlow lens nothing works? ive got a eq5 goto with a Celestron Sky-Watcher Pro 80ED-APO Refractor Telescope  and i was using Polaris and saturn as a test

Great tutorial, I just acquired Orion Sirius for astrophotography and have few questions. First, what is "park scope"? After polar aligning and selecting 3 star alignment, I chose Vega and was little off target but not much then I turned off the mount to read the manual and going through the same process, now the mount was way off in the opposite direction to Vega. Is there a function to erase previous command? Second, when I press the declination direction buttons, it makes a loud grounding noise and vibrates and does not move to star target. Something wrong with my declination gear? Thanks again.

Hi! We just bought an Skywatcher Explorer 130P. Now when we want to look at something, for example the moon, the SynScan goes to something he 'thinks' is the moon, but we can't change the position of the telescope anymore with the directional keys. And we can't see the moon through the telescope either What should we do? Our SynScan version is 3.45. Thank you so much in advance.

do i need to a  polar alignment first before doning the 2 star alignment?

I just bought the NEQ6 with the V3.28 Hand Controller and after initialising the Hand Controller I'm not able to move the mount via the Hand Controller although it will go through the alignment movements, but won't respond to manual movement via the directional buttons.   What am I missing???

Hey doug, once your are star aligned and you go to an object, does the mount still track at that 6 speed you switched it to or does it change to a different speed? thanks

strange.. the manual tells me that the scope will not automatically slew to the first star, i will have to find it and go to it manually, this makes it look so easy.