The staff at Frosty Drew Observatory, tired of weeks of cloudy Friday
nights, had our own private observing session last night (our only
perk, but a good one!). Without the crowd queueing up well before
sunset, I had the opportunity to do a leisurely two-star alignment
with our 9mm reticle eyepiece, and had excellent accuracy on all the
GOTOs, even across a wide arc of the sky.

This raised a question to me, answerable only by other folks who are
charged with the care and feeding of these magnificent beasts.

I've done 2-star alignments before, and have good results. This
accuracy never seems to survive a shutdown, even though we religiously
follow the parking sequence given in the manual. I've tried setting
the time to within 1 second of an atomic clock each time I start the
scope, but that hasn't helped. We've tried SYNCing on objects as we
observe; we've tried not SYNCing. No matter what happens, we find that
if we didn't do an alignment that evening, we can be off by as much as
30 arcminutes on a relatively short slew.

So - if you have a permanently mounted 16", how well does yours hold the
alignment? Am I just asking too much of this procedure? Our scope is
mounted alt-az, if it makes a difference.
--
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12 Emma G Lane, Narragansett, RI 02882 - vox 401.782.9042
Without deviation from the norm, "progress" is not possible. - FZappa

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