How to use an Equatorial mount. (Beginners guide}

okay you've set your new telescope up and it looks something like this in this position and now you say to yourself how on earth do i use this thing well that question answered and more coming right up [Music] welcome to my channel small optics my name is jason and in this video we're going to be looking at one of these things an equatorial mount and just how to get you started and it's going to be a very basic guide but a guide that's going to show you exactly how to use it and get the very best out of an equatorial mount and trust me once you learn how to use one of these things you don't want to you don't want to go back so first of all let me just explain the reason why a telescope is mounted on a mount such as this and it's just purely how the stars appear to move across the sky okay the they appear to move in an arc shape like that all right and one of these type of telescopes will move in an arc shape across the sky to follow the stars and it just makes tracking the moon or a planet so much easier once you've got one of these things set up properly now when you first set up your telescope and you try and move it up and down and left and right it just seems really complicated and that's because you used to you're probably used to one of these type of mounts now this is just called an altas mount and that's just basically a fancy word for up down left and right okay yeah you out okay your altitude is your up and down and your left and right is what is your ass which is your azimuth okay and like i said it's just a fancy word for left and right basically now if stars moved across the sky like that then one of these type of mounts would be perfect because we'd be just going up down left right sort of thing but they don't and like i say they're moving and up so without further ado let's get into how you set up one of these uh equatorial maps now if you look at the way my telescope is set up you'll see that this is called the starting position or the neutral position um and it's very rare that you actually use your telescope in this position but it's uh you'll be you'll always start off in this position when you take it outside okay i'll explain it all uh in a short while don't worry so the way to know you've got it right okay is look at your counterweight and it should be at its lowest position okay pointing down towards the floor so it shouldn't be uh like this like this or anything you know make sure it's in its lowest position pointing towards the floor okay and it will form like a t shape that runs with your telescope tube all right now you know you're in the right position if you've got this far there's not a lot left to do trust me now if you um look here this is the probably the most important dial on your telescope all right when it comes to setting up now all this does is it will alter uh the latitude now your latitude is this here this line here now if you imagine there's a hole drilled the right way through that don't do that though because it will damage your scope obviously but imagine there's a hole drilled right way through that and that will be pointing at the pulse star now the angle of the pole star varies uh um your latitude you know depending on where you live find where your local latitude is um and set this now the way you said this is you may have a locking screw like this don't forget as well your your adjustments and nuts and bolts may vary they may look a little bit different but basic equatorial mounts like this are pretty much all the same okay so slacking off anything that may be locked not up here not these these are just purely for moving your telescope okay we're talking about the mount now and set this roughly to what your local latitude is now if you've mentioned your tripod level and you've set up your latitude adjustment here you're pretty much there and the rest now is really we need a nice clean eye and take the scope out uh to set it up properly or polar alignment this is what you call rough polar alignment and if you were now to take your telescope out in this position and point it with the counterweight pointing due north you're very we'll be very roughly polar aligned okay but i'll just show you how to fine tune that when you go outside another thing you've got to make sure that it's set up is your finder scope make sure that your final scope is in uh in sync with your telescope and this is easily done just you you're best off doing this in the daytime and find a static target over in the distance a tree or something and find it in your uh fight in your eyepiece and then check it with the finder scope and you may need to just do some adjustments just to make sure that the the target you're looking at is spot in the center of the crosshairs and if you've done all that you're now ready to take the telescope outside okay so now imagine that we're outside and the telescope is pointing due north okay now it's a good good idea at this point is is to just turn your mount around by adjusting maybe uh where it's fastened on the bottom sometimes the flattened on the side and just line the uh actual amount of your counterweight if you like up with one of the legs all right and i'll it'll become clear later why that will really save you a lot of time when it comes to setting up your telescope again and do remember that this is only a one-time setup i mean it sounds it's a lot to explain really it's longer to explain than it is actually taking your telescope up and just you know setting it up because virtually all of it's doing already so what we do now so we're pointing you know if we make sure our tripod is level uh we're pointing dune off now we need to find polaris now to find polaris or polaris however you want to pronounce it uh it's really easy to find um you find the uh constellation ursa major which is also known as the big dipper the great bears frying pan there's lots of names for it it's a familiar constellation that looks something like that and the bottom two stars okay we'll point virtually at the uh north star okay and it's about an ursa major constellation width away if you get what i mean and uh once you've found uh the pole star get uh try and find it in your finderscope okay now the way we're going to find the pole star in our final scope is we're going to alter um the actual azimuth so if i just loosen that off now this is on on your mount itself gosh that's gone time all right there we go okay so now and this is the only time we're ever gonna be touching this once we've done this this is going to be locked off okay so make sure that the entire mount can just turn a little bit like that okay and now get the pole star in your finder okay and again you're going to be doing it with these kind of adjustments okay now if you need to go up a little bit this is where you're going to use your uh out sorry your latitude setting remember we did as latitude um and just and you can turn there'll be a little screw here at the back that you can just fine tune it okay and with a combination of your up and down left and right get polaris spot on in your in your finderscope once you've got polaris in your final scope which won't move because it only moves a tiny bit really um lock everything off okay just just lock everything down and make sure you're all ready and you actually that's it you're set you're done okay so now it's all set up we're polar aligned where the tripod level let's just talk a little bit how you actually maneuver the scope which goes pointing north we're polar aligned we've got our latitude set up correctly and now we're all ready to observe so we want to observe the southern skies now and our telescope's pointing north well you know what you do and the way i always or when i first started to learn um an equatorial mount is when i was pointing north i turned anti-clockwise to go south okay so i'm turning anti-clockwise and i'm turning everything anti-clockwise can you see how the telescope's turning just like that all right and exactly the same appears but with the same for all horizons okay so you've got three um scope of the entire sky there's nowhere that this won't point to in this setup okay now once you you round like this okay say i'm uh now looking at jupiter over in the south okay the way you know that the telescope's wrong all right or maybe wrong is if the counterweight is higher than the telescope okay if it starts going like this all right you know there's something wrong all right you never need the counter weight wants to be level at most okay so if we were following uh a star across the sky it would be like this you see you can see it's going across in an arc and this is why because we've set it up uh to the right latitude of the pole star and because all the stars move around the pulse star now we only have to adjust one um adjustment which would be our right ascension okay and this is this one here you've probably got like long antennae things i've taken them off just for simplicity here and this is the only one you'll have to use okay once you've got that target in your field of view you just have to move one and it will track it right across the night sky now you may have noticed also my focus is now pointing down to the floor now a lot of people like to put their telescope with the focuser opposite the um counterweight here okay and the theory behind that is wherever the scope is you've always got access to the eyepiece but you know i don't really like that because such as like if this is kind of the the height i have my my um tripod and if the scope was up here i was looking somewhere on the north and it was you know i'd still i mean i'm 5 11. and i'd still struggle to get up there okay so i just take advantage of tube rings if you've got tube rings use them okay i'm just slacking them off a little bit so we're now looking at the southern skies and take that off of the easier to turn and now we can just turn and place the eyepiece where it needs to be now can you remember earlier when i i mentioned turning the mount head so it was actually in line with one of the tripod legs the reason why you do this is you're always going to take an equatorial mount and point it north okay so if at all possible mark the ground where the tripod is going to be stood okay you can temporarily mark it if you like but it's better if you can just permanently mark it do a secret mark if you like that nobody knows about only you so every time you take your telescope out the only thing you've got to do is point this leg oh yeah sorry just mark a little marking on the leg on one of the legs like put a little sticker on there and put n if you like for north or whatever but just identify that north so all you have to do now is like place the the leg up at the north place your tripod so it's in line uh sorry your mount so it's in line with this leg and that's half the battle done now that all that's left for you to do is just get your telescope out there on a nice clear night and start enjoying the night sky and the best way to learn how to use one of these things is to just get out there and start using it um but these few little pointers that i've just shown you here i'm sure you'll soon go ah i get it it'll all click as soon as you start using one but get your latitude right pointed north you're on your way i hope i've kept this simple enough for you like i said it's not complicated and they really do help once you do get used to it so in the meantime enjoy your new telescope enjoy these clear longer nights for evan and i will see you on the next one take care bye you

Channel: Small Optics

Views: 90,912

Keywords: EQ mount, Equatorial mount, How to use a equatorial mount, astronomy for beginners, astronomy, polar aligmnent, telescope, skywatcher, tutorial

Id: RFCreX1x4_s

Length: 13min 37sec (817 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 01 2020