The mount is on a stationary pier in the dome. I have done star alignment several times, but none are spot-on the stars even after star alignment. Most times the stars are not in the finder scope’s view, and I have to use the red dot to see and move the star so the finder scope view will see the star. I hit Enter when in the finder scope’s center and then hit Align when centered in the eyepiece or camera view.
I image using the telescope in a dome. The dome is not electric, so you have to manually rotate the dome after going to your object. Sky view is limited due to some trees mostly in the NNW to NNE. Polaris can be seen well. I polar aligned the telescope using the NINA 3-point polar alignment feature and believe it or not, I got zero on all AZ and ALT settings. The Dome’s mount does not have a polar scope.
The hand controller is an older version; “NexStar+”; HC: GEM 5.31.9200, MC: 5.20 5.20, and the mini-USB connects to the hand controller. No USB port on the mount at all. I think the hand controller’s version cannot be updated anymore per Celestron’s tech people I communicated a while back. Also, CPWI version is 2.4.2 and cannot use newer versions because hand controller option is not in the newer versions. It is sad that you cannot use the hand controller after connection to CPWI to slew. Using the CPWI’s slew controller is difficult for me. Using a laptop in the small dome is difficult when trying to do star alignment.
Do you have to do star alignment each session with CPWI, or can you save the last alignment? I do not use CPWI except on the Club’s mount and did notice a “save last alignment” option. I have looked at many YouTube videos on using CPWI but to my memory I did not see one addressing this.
Can you just connect to CPWI and skip the alignment and use NINA for plate solving when the telescope is set in home position which is set at the index marks anyway? While taking pictures NINA worked well with plate solving on that telescope.
Please respond.
Thank you,
Edited by ColdNights, 04 June 2023 - 12:23 PM.