Welcome to another edition of Telescope Man.
Hello and welcome back to another edition of Telescope Man.
You know, I've got some questions posed to me in private messages on astronomyforum.net
where I moderate there from time to time and members will send me a private message
asking me what do I mean when I say do a fake alignment with a go-to scope.
So today I'm going to show you what I mean by a fake alignment with my little ETX 125 PE
that's sitting here right beside me right now.
So let's take a look at the hand controller right now.
This is a regular 497 hand controller that's plugged into this ETX PE
and what separates the PE from the non-PE is that it has a module right here on the side
that determines true north and levels the scope.
So you don't have to do that with a PE model as you would have to do with a regular model.
With a regular model you'd have to level it, level everything, level the tube usually,
point the scope north as accurately as you can.
Well this does all that for me.
The little LNT module back here, level north technology does that for me.
It's also got a built-in clock so it keeps time and date.
And as far as site goes, all I have to do is enter my zip code for the observing site
and it remembers the last zip code so if you're using this at home all the time for instance
you never really have to even change the site.
So with that said we're going to take you through this short video on what do I mean
when I say do a fake alignment.
Well first off this scope is very well trained and calibrated and I'm using a separate power source
on a little car starter battery that's down there below the scope you can't see it right now.
I do not use internal batteries.
There are no batteries in the base of this scope.
Okay so my first thing to you is get rid of those batteries and go buy yourself a separate 12 volt power source.
After you turn the hand controller on what you want to do, the first thing you want to do
and I'm assuming that you've already trained this scope.
You've already done that okay so here we go.
So the first thing I do is I skip through the hand controller and I go to telescope and I press enter
and then I scroll down to calibrate motors which is right here.
You can see that I might be able to calibrate motors.
Okay it only takes a few seconds so let's hit enter and see what this scope does.
Now keep your eye on that scope.
Okay it made a little movement up and a little movement to the side
and what it did was it checked the current coming from this battery down here.
Kind of adjusted the motors to the current that it was seeing coming from this power pack.
Okay so that's the first thing I do when I set up with this scope or with that LX-90.
It's big brother that's sitting right over there as I'll do a calibrate motors.
Now once that's done I'll simply go to setup, hit enter and align, hit enter again
and I'm going to select not a one star or two star or anything like that I'm going to select automatic alignment.
Remember this is a PE scope. Functions almost identical to that LX-90 that you see over there.
They both work very in the same fashion so I've selected automatic alignment.
Now keep your eye on this scope while it does a little dance and watch it.
The first thing it's going to do is it's going to try to find level.
And that's what it's doing right now it's finding level.
Remember I didn't level the scope or anything.
Now it's going to swing around and try to find north which is often that direction toward that window that way.
So it's going to swing all the way around which is what it's doing right now.
It's not really as noisy as people make it out to be you know I hear all these things all the time about it sounds like a coffee grinder.
Well let me kind of get my microphone kind of close to it you can hear it.
It's not really that bad is it? It's really not that bad.
A lot of that is just a little exaggeration on some amateur astronomers exaggerating a little bit.
Okay now that it's found north it's going to re-level itself again in that direction.
So it leveled itself when it first started and now it's re-leveling itself on the other side.
And all that's done so that it can find the tilt of the tripod.
And it'll calculate that tilt and take it into consideration when it's moving around in the sky later.
Right now it's finding the tilt of this tripod because it may or may not be level.
Okay and it's thinking about it right now and in a moment it's going to head off to the first alignment store all by itself.
Taking another look at level right now pointed this way.
So you notice it took a level three different times while it was going around.
So here we go and it's slowing to its first star which it automatically picked Arcturus.
Okay now here comes the fake alignment part. Obviously I'm inside my office right now and I can't see any stars.
All right but I can tell you right now it's headed off in the general direction of Arcturus.
And there it goes. If you buy a Uscope this is what you need to do before you hand over your money.
You need to make sure that it runs through all these alignment electronic calculations properly.
And then you can even tell if it's actually pointed in the general direction of where that star should be at whatever time you're testing it.
There is no hurry to center the star or to press enter.
Just take your time finding the star and press enter if you're actually doing it for real.
Right now I'm just going to press enter because I can't see any stars.
Now it's selecting the second star. Right there selecting and it's slowing to Vega.
We'll be up there some kind of way. So it's off headed toward Vega and it is going in generally the correct direction right now.
Again this is what you need to do when you buy a Uscope of this type and you want to verify that the electronics are good.
Really all you have to do is do a fake alignment like I'm doing before you hand over your money.
Okay it beeped at me it says it's got Vega. I don't know if it has Vega or not but I can tell you it's in the proper direction.
So I'm just going to press enter again.
And of course it says alignment successful. Okay and it's asking me to select another object.
So I'm going to select let's see let's select can't select any planets. Let's select Messier 13 Messier 13.
So we'll go to deep sky Messier objects and we'll put in 13 and hit enter and go to there it goes off to Messier 13.
Now I use this same technique at public observing events when I want to get set up during the daytime be all set up and ready to go as soon as the first star is visible in the sky.
I will execute all this just like I did just now even when I'm out in the field the stars haven't come out yet.
So what's the next thing I do after I've initialized it aligned it on two stars that I can't see yet.
And the first star does appear which tonight it would be Vega. Okay that would probably be the first star that would be visible in the sky.
What I do then is I go to star a name star select Vega execute a go to Vega.
Now it might miss it by a very little bit. Okay it won't quite hit it because I really didn't do it alignment.
What I do is I center that object all right center that object and I need scopes have a neat deal Celestron has a similar feature.
What you do on me scopes is you hold down the inner key for about two seconds and it beeps at you and it says enter to sync.
I hit enter again and it synchronizes on that object.
So what I do is I will go ahead and center Vega once I can see it and then I'll synchronize on it and from then on my go tos are much much better in that part of the sky.
So I'm ready to go basically I can use it usually use a wide field eyepiece and move the scope around and keep on syncing my way around the sky using that sync technique in these me hand controllers again.
You got a 497 you hold down the inner key for two seconds.
Let go it beeps at you it says enter again to sync you hit enter again and it beeps at you again and you've just synchronized on that object.
So you can work your way around the sky using the sync function in this hand controller.
Now it does have a nifty feature that Celestron scopes do not have and that's called a circular search pattern or circular search.
And what you do let's say you've done all this and that object is not in the eyepiece.
Well what you do is hit the go to button again and it basically says spiral search and the telescope will start searching in an ever widening circle until it sweeps up the object that you're actually looking for and you just press any key to stop it.
So what I'll do if the object is not there I'll execute a spiral search by pressing go to again and I keep my eye on the eyepiece keep looking for that object.
And when I see it coming through the eyepiece I press any key center it up again and hey I sync on it again.
Alright now I'm ready to go in that part of the sky. So these mead controllers have a couple of neat features one's called sync and one's called spiral search.
And you can use those at night along with this fake alignment that I just did before the sun goes down to get your go tos to be really good go tos.
So until next time I wish you clear skies and remember keep looking up to see the greatest show on earth right over your head every single night.
See y'all later folks.
