Reply To: Lat Lon coordinates

Forums General Discussion Lat Lon coordinates Reply To: Lat Lon coordinates

#626411
Grant Privett
Participant

Nor can I. Not sure where it went.

Bottom line: Google Earth is your best bet as TheSky doesn’t (I don’t think) talk to a GPS dongle, so any location it has for you will be from an IP address or the nearest town long/lat. I could be wrong here.

Note though, that time and location are both important. You need a good position and good times. So, to get accurate pointing:

1, Set the computer system clock using its “Change date and time” setting.
2, Start TheSkyX
3, Set your location to the Google Earth value
4, Do your 100+ pointings T-Point run.

And whenever you use the telescope set the time again just before running TheSkyX – its an essential. Many laptops/PC lose multiple seconds over a week or two between observing sessions – some do better than others.

Not sure what mount you are using, but a Paramount MEII does far better at absolute pointing (after T-Point) than my regular NEQ6 which was good to 1 arc mins on the west sky last night but a lot further out on the east part of the sky. The mount quality is a big factor. If your mount is not entirely consistent even T-Point cannot make it perfect.