Skywatcher HEQ5 PRO Synscan GOTO mount Setup Tutorial

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[Music] so i'm going to show you how i set up my  skywatcher heq5 mount. i need a nice firm   level hard surface to mount it on. spread the legs  out as wide as we can and align that peg with the   north as best we can. use a compass for that or  if you know where polaris is you can use polaris.   then use a spirit level across two of the joints  and adjust one of the two legs in order to get   the spirit level bubble in the middle. once  that's done return the spirit level 90 degrees   and adjust the third leg until that is level and  once that's done the top of your amount is level. next step is to fit the mount head. gently put that on and just take the slack off  of the azimuth bolts. now we're going to fit   the securing plate which goes up through the the  hole in the bottom and has a spreader plate on it   to push the legs apart from one another. do up  the main axis of it first tightening the hand   screw at the top and then tighten the bottom one.  you will feel some shifting and jerking in the   mount as you tighten this bottom one that's okay.  just take the slack out of those azimuth bolts.   you can see that the azimuth bolts  rotate the mount in a horizontal plane. now we're going to adjust the elevation  bolts to get the graticule pointing   roughly to our latitude. you have to turn these  in an opposing way to one another so you would   tighten one whilst loosening the other and vice  versa just as you do with the azimuth bolts.   i live at 51 degrees latitude so here i'm  adjusting the graticule to get to about 51   degrees. just needs to be accurate enough so  you can see polaris when you look up through   the telescope. once you reach the right  position take out any slack in the bolts.   now we drop the counterweight bar and lock that  off and remove the button from the end of the bar   so that we can fit the counterweights.  you may need one or two counterweights   depending on how much equipment you're going to  be carrying. be careful to do up the thumb screw   firmly on these weights because you've not got  the protective button in the end at this point.   you don't want it falling out and squashing  your toes. think about where you position the   thumb screws because you don't want them  to snag on cables. and at the earliest   opportunity get that button refitted to the end  of the counterweight bar to protect your toes. now i'm fitting the handset, so plug that  into the mount and insert the handset into   the carry bracket. i have a usb cable on  mine. now i'm fitting the telescope so just   do an approximate positioning, not balanced at  this point but we'll just fit the telescope. tightening the two clutches  to make sure it doesn't fall. and now it's time to fit the rest of  the cables. we've got the power cables,   camera cable, various dew heater cables and motor  focus control cables. there's also a cable to the   base of the telescope for a fan that blows air  up through the telescope. once your cables are   all fitted... i have a dew shield to fit. i put  a neoprene dew shield on the end of my telescope   that can have a significant effect on balance  so that should be in place as well before you   balance. basically once everything's set up you  can balance the telescope. start with the RA.   undo the RA clutch and see what the balance is  like. here we're telescope heavy so we need to   move the two counterweights down the bar until we  achieve a better balance and lock them off again. now we've got a nice balance on the RA. now  we turn our attention to the declination. so undo the declination clutch with the RA  in the horizontal position. you can see here   that the telescope is bottom heavy...  particularly if i turn it horizontal you'll   see that the bottom of the telescope is falling so  the telescope needs to be moved up in the mount.   it's important to return to roughly  to the home position at this point,   as you see there, and then move the telescope so  that you don't stress the drive gears particularly   on the RA. so i've shifted that and then i'll take  it back into this position and lock the RA clutch   and see if that's better... and it's still tail  heavy so we'll go back to the home position again   and shift the telescope up on the dovetail  plate a little bit more... tighten it off again ...and test the balance once more. looking  much better now, and we test it in the   vertical position as well. if it's out here you  need to twist the telescope within its rings. ...and return to the home position.  so that's all nicely balanced now   now we'll take the cover off the  front and the back of the polar scope   and perform the polar alignment, and i've  done a separate tutorial on polar alignment   so i'm not going to cover that here. it's  important to turn the deck to open up the   hole so the polar scope can see through  the mount to do your polar alignment. so this is the point of which  you would switch to the other   tutorial if you want to know how  to perform the Polar alignment. once your polar alignment is complete, replace  the covers on both ends of the polar scope. ...and now it's time to put the telescope and  the mount in to the home position in a more   accurate way so do this first by turning the RA  to a horizontal position and getting a spirit   level place it on the body of the mount and then  adjust the RA until the spirit level bubble is in   the middle, and then adjust the graticule on the  RA to 12 o'clock. i don't tighten the thumb screw   at that point... and then i turn the RA 90 degrees  by turning from 12 o'clock to 6 o'clock. once it's   at 6 o'clock i lock off the RA. now we do the  Declination part. so we put the spirit level on   the telescope. this time undo the Dec clutch  and adjust until the bubble's in the middle.   lock off the Dec clutch and now remove the spirit  level and adjust the graticule to zero degrees,   undo the thumb screws, set it to zero  and tighten them up again this time.   now we can undo the Dec clutch and rotate the  Dec of the telescope round to 90 degrees... ...and lock the deck clutch. and that's now  in the home position much more accurately. so when the mount initializes you get an  initializing message and that's shortly followed   by the synscan and the version number that's your  firmware version that's loaded into the handset,   so you just press enter to clear that and then  you get a warning about 'never use your telescope   to point directly at the sun' then press enter  again and you're asked to set your longitude. now   you've got west flashing here with the two arrows  in the bottom corners you can toggle between east   and west and then you can press the right arrow  here and change the digits if you wish to say   with the right arrow left arrow to move the  cursor just type in the digits that you want   and when you're happy with it your  longitude is set correctly press enter.   same principle with the latitude. if you're just  happy with what it says just press enter and it   skips that entry or accepts it and then it's  got the time zone. same principle for editing   the time zone how many hours shifted from  GMT you are, Enter. then your elevation.   you can look up your elevation using various  online apps or phone apps entered in meters   and then there's the date. now be careful with the  date it's month day year is the format it wants,   not day month year. it's easy to get that wrong so  i'm going to put in 07 26 2020 for example, enter   and then the time maybe twenty two zero zero and  now enter something that's maybe ten seconds or so   after the current time so you've got time to look  at your clock accurate clock and then wait for   exactly the moment that the time you've entered  arrives and at that moment press enter and that   gives you as good a synchronization as you need  between the actual time and what's entered in the   mount. it then shows you the time clocking away  so you can check you've done a decent job of that.   press enter and it asks you if you're in daylight  saving so again the bottom two arrows you can   toggle between yes and no and then hit enter and  now it gives you information about where polaris   should be in the polar scope. now for me i've  already polar aligned at this point and i don't   use this information. if you want to use this  information just to do your polar line you can   but so you press enter twice to get through that  now ask you begin alignment question mark yes or   no this is about star alignment so if you say yes  to this you'll then be using the handset to do   a star alignment if you say no then obviously it  won't do that star alignment but if you want to   control your telescope mount from a laptop using  something like stellarium scope then you may wish   to do your star alignment from there and not do it  from the mount in which case you would choose to   no so i'm going to choose that for a moment  i'll come back in a minute and show how to   do the star alignment using the handset i'm going  to press the down arrow to go to utility function   press enter and then hit down arrow until i see   direct mode and then hit enter so now the mount  is set up for being controlled by a laptop   through that usb connector but i'm not going  to do that i'm not going to go press escape to   take myself back up through the menus no longer  in pc direct mode and go back to the setup hit   enter and then scroll through until i get back to  alignment and hit enter so if i'd have said yes to   uh begin alignment uh or one actually just to  begin alignment it would have brought me to   this menu so uh you can then choose whether you  want to do a one or two or three star alignment   if you're just going to look in one local area  of the sky it's fine to do a one star alignment   so long as you choose a style that's reasonably  close to where you're going to be observing or   photographing if you're going to be looking at a  number of different places across the sky may be   better to do two or even three star alignment to  get a better mapping of the sky over a wider area   but for the purposes of  demonstration i'm just going to show   a one star a line and if you do a two or three  you're basically following the same process   but on two or three different styles instead of  just one so i'll choose a one star align and press   enter now it's suggesting arcturus as this as the  star you don't have to use the star it suggests   you can use stellarium or similar software to  check what bright star is going to be visible   right now from your mount allowing for all the  different obstructions like trees and houses   and pick a star that's reasonably close to where  you're going to be observing so let's assume uh we   don't want to use arcturus we want to use vega  so i've hit the down arrow and switch to vega   then i hit enter and now the mount is slewing to  point to vega and once it completes the slew it   will then ask you to center the telescope  view on vega and that's done manually by   either looking at photos being taken repeatedly  or with the camera or by looking through the   eyepiece so we'll just wait for the slew to  finish that's just stopping now now in order   to move the scope once it finishes that's just  finished use arrow buttons center to eyepiece so   we're going to use these four buttons here to  adjust where the star is in the field of view   but the rate at which it shifts when we press this  buttons is controllable so you can choose your   rate may be a good idea to start with rate six for  example and you just hit rate and then the number   and now that sets the speed now that six is a  sort of medium speed if you want to go really fast   maybe choose eight rate eight now you can hear  it's uh quite a rapid movement that's really quite   fast once you get reasonably close maybe choose  something like rate five and make your fine tune   adjustment so you've got ra and deck adjustments  on there now once your star is nice and centered   in your field of view hit enter now because this  was a one star align it's now saying alignment   successful and that's basically the star alignment  completed if it was a two star line it would now   be getting you to choose your second star and you  go through the same process with the second star   so the alignment star alignment is complete  and we're now ready to go and explore the sky   so we can hit escape to get us back up through  the menus up to the top and now we can press   object and we can choose what we want to look  at let's say we wanted to go and look at jupiter   we would select solar system we can choose other  things such as Messier objects NGC, IC etc but   we'll choose solar system hit enter and then  scroll through the planets mercury, venus, mars,   jupiter. found the object we want and press enter  and it tells us the current out as of that object   press enter again view object question mark  press enter again and now the telescope will slew   to the object and that's it's as simple as  that once you're all set up to choose an   object from the catalog built into the handset  and slew to it. i hope you found this useful   check out my other tutorial if you want to know  more about the polar alignment see you next time!
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Channel: Martin’s Astrophotography
Views: 77,550
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Keywords: astrophotography, skywatcher, HEQ5, Skywatcher HEQ5, Setup, tutorial
Id: ArNH7LRWJ9Q
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Length: 15min 0sec (900 seconds)
Published: Fri Jul 31 2020
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