Hi Bryn
congrats on the new mount. I'll do my best to give you my answers your questions below:
>>>At the CWD position, I assume that the RA and Dec number for this position Should both be zero?
No. Those coordinates should reflect the RA and DEC of the celestial north pole. The Equinox J2000 equatorial coordinates of Polaris (roughly the same place) are RA = 02h 31m 48.7s, Dec = +89¡ã 15' 51". JNow is a little different, but you can see it's nowhere near 0 for either coordinate
>>>Switched on Pro, polar aligned and go to slew, the mount skews ¡°randomly¡± nowhere near target. I plate solve and the pro returns different (look accurate) RA and dec figures, but the mount is reporting very different figures to the pro.
Hard to say exactly what's going on, but generally speaking the two systems have to be coordinated. Many folks are surprised the mount and the?imaging app (in your case ASIAir) don't have a "shared settings" regarding time, location, and pointing model. They each have their own settings and your goal is to get the basic settings identical, and then sync the sky models. If you have different configuration in one vs. the other, you will get different information. For example, if Gemini thinks it's midnight and ASIAir thinks it's noon, you are going to get different results for where your telescope is pointing.?
first thing is to make sure both have accurate (and identical) date, time, timezone, and location information.?
second is using ASIAir, slew anywhere that is clearly east or west (not around the poles) and platesolve. that should give you accurate coordinates on where in the sky you are actually pointing. You need to sync that with the Gemini in order for the gemini to update its coordinates. If there's no sync, it won't know what is the correction
>>>So I check the RA and Dec figures in the hand controller, and they report the same as the mount figures reported in the pro.
the hand controller only reports the mount coordinates, it does not have its own coordinate database or settings,?so this makes sense.?
I have two general suggestions for you
First, I suggest you get familiar with the Gemini system without using the ASIAir. Make sure you can set it up and slew it using goto so the pointing is accurate. It sounds like the settings may not be accurate somewhere.?
Second, you might want to familiarize yourself with the celestial coordinate system. There are some great resources out there,?i have found this youtube series really helpful.??
it's a 23 part series, but goes pretty quickly. the celestial coordinate system including RA and DEC really get into it around part 8.
I apologize if this part is unnecessary for you. I'm only reflecting on your question regarding the RA/DEC of CWD position.
hope that helps
Brian
On Tue, Oct 27, 2020 at 6:52 AM Bryn Evans via <brynevans2000=
[email protected]> wrote:
Newb question and a bit of background. I hope this is an easy one? But I ask for the collective¡¯s help please as it¡¯s now starting to really frustrate me!!
At the CWD position, I assume that the RA and Dec number for this position Should both be zero?
If not, why not? I¡¯m trying to figure out my new to me GM-8 with Gemini 1 and ASIAir Pro. After cold starting handset last night with mount in CWD, set Lat long and UTC correctly. I do have the External Losmandy encoders enabled if that makes any difference?
Switched on Pro, polar aligned and go to slew, the mount skews ¡°randomly¡± nowhere near target. I plate solve and the pro returns different (look accurate) RA and dec figures, but the mount is reporting very different figures to the pro. I try to sync from the pro to the mount, but no joy. So I check the RA and Dec figures in the hand controller, and they report the same as the mount figures reported in the pro. To me this rules out an error in the pro and points the finger are the mount.
So I do a bit more investigating and return the mount to home in the hand controller, and it goes back to nowhere near the CWD position in RA. I return the mount with the hand controller to the CWD position and check RA and Dec figures in the hand controller. The dec is pretty much 0, but the RA is reading +53! I think I¡¯ve found the culprit.
Now what to do?? This is where I could use the collective help please?
1. How could my figures be so far off in the CWD position? So I don¡¯t do it again?
2. How do I/what is the best way of rectifying the problem? Manually entering the figures at the CWD position in the hand controller?
thanks for reading
