Hello..

I recently got a celestron 80mm refractor on a cg5 gt mount

The scope works great when I point it at stuff I know is there, but the problem is I cannot get it aligned at all..

With my walmart meade I just leveled the scope and pointed it at north with my compass, then turned it on. It pointed to some general spot in space and I centered the brightest star in that area. After 2 or 3 stars it was done, and it was usually pretty close.

On the celestron I am trying the same thing, but must be doing something completely wrong because when I pick a target that I know it is pointing off in no mans land. What I do is align the index pointers to match, then physically move the scope until it matches north with my compass. Then I turn the thing on, and it confirms my location. Then it points at a star, but when looking through the scope, there is no really stand out star in that area. So I pick one that is kind of bright....

Then when I tell it to go to saturn (something that I know where it is) it is not even close. It is pointing due east and low on the horizon when saturn is high in the sky and a little south...

Just thinking out loud I should confirm my clock settings..

But I think the point I want to know is what direction do I position the scope when I turn it on. I cant find any info on that so I just guessed north

Long post, hope someone can help me out

Thanks!!

Mate, I don't know if this helps, but I put the scope beside the pc, went online and downloaded a live feed clock so that it is accurate for my area, then entered the exact time on the celestron keypad in the utilities menu under scope setup.

Additional to that, download your exact co-oordinates as well and enter those in manually too.

Mine is Gps, but I like to cross check the satellites with known earth coordinates anyway.

Hope this helps,

Are you north or southern hemisphere?

Baz.

HI Flagon,

I recently purchased an Advanced Series Celestron 9 1/4 and was having EXACTLY the same problems on the alignment front.I was wondering how u managed to overcome ur problem and if you could guide me on as to how one could overcome the same. Believe me ive searched the entire Celestron website (i think!) and have not been able to find a solution.Any help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks

Raghav

Is it possible that you did not accurately polar-align the mount? Polar alignment is ESSENTIAL for all German equatorial mounts, especially computerized ones. Make sure that the mount is set to your latitude, and that you have centered Polaris in the polar alignment scope.

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