Celestron NexStar 8 Instruction Manual page 15

NexStar then asks you to center in the eyepiece the alignment star you selected. Use the direction buttons to slew the
telescope to the alignment star.
Helpful
Hint
In order to accurately center the alignment star in the eyepiece, it will be necessary to decrease the slew rate of the motors
for fine centering. This is done by pressing the RATE key (11) on the hand controller then selecting the number that
corresponds to the speed you desire. (9 = fastest , 1 = slowest).
Once the alignment star is centered in the field of view of the eyepiece, press the ALIGN key (2) to accept this position.
NexStar will then ask you to select and center a second alignment star and press the ALIGN key. It is best to choose alignment
stars that are a good distance away from one another. Stars that are at least 40º to 60º apart from each other will give you a
more accurate alignment than stars that are close to each other.
Once the second star alignment is completed properly, the display will read Alignment Successful
tracking motors turn-on and begin to track.
Auto-Align
Alternatively, if you do not know the names of two bright stars, you can align the telescope by entering the longitude and
latitude of your observing location, and the NexStar will automatically choose two stars for alignment and roughly center the
stars in the field of view of the Star Pointer. Once again the telescope should be set up outside with all accessories attached and
the lens cover removed.
1. Once the NexStar is powered on , Press ENTER to begin alignment.
2. Use the Up and Down scroll keys to select AutoAlign if it is not already displayed, and press ENTER.
3. The telescope will then ask you to use the arrow keys (10) to level the telescope tube and point the front of the telescope
towards north. North can be found by finding the direction of the North Star (Polaris) or by using a compass. You do not
need to point at the North Star, only the north horizon. For help finding the direction of the North Star, see the Astronomy
Basics section of the manual. Alignment only needs to be approximate, however a close alignment will make the auto
alignment more accurate.
4. The hand control display will then ask for the following information:
Date -
Time - Enter the current local time for your area. You can enter either the local time (i.e. 08:00), or you can
enter military time (i.e. 20:00 ).
Select PM or AM. If military time was entered, the hand control will bypass this step.
Choose between Standard time or Daylight Savings time. Use the Up and Down scroll buttons (10) to toggle between
options.
Select the time zone that you are observing from. Again, use the Up and Down buttons (10) to scroll through the choices.
If you enter any of the alignment information incorrectly, pressing UNDO acts as a backspace button, and will back the cursor to
its previous position allowing you to re-enter any necessary information.
Finally, you must enter the longitude and latitude of the location of your observing site. The coordinates can be obtained from a
listing in the appendix of this manual. These coordinates can be saved so that the longitude and latitude only has to be entered
once from any given location.
Press ENTER at the Select
1.
Use the Up and Down scroll keys to select Enter Long/Lat
2.
3. Use the table in Appendix C to locate the closest longitude and latitude for your current observing location and enter those
numbers when asked in the hand control, pressing ENTER after each entre.
The display will then ask if you would like to save these coordinates for future use. If you press "Yes", the next time you
AutoAlign the telescope, you can choose User Defined
location. To save the entered longitude and latitude, simply press "Yes" and enter a number from 0-9. Pressing ENTER will assign
that number to your current position.
Based on this information, the NexStar will automatically select a bright star that is above the horizon and slew towards it. At this
point the telescope is only roughly aligned, so the alignment star should only be close to the field of view of the Star Pointer
finder. Once finished slewing, the display will ask you to use the arrow buttons to center the selected star with the red dot in the
center of the Star Pointer. If for some reason the chosen star is not visible (perhaps behind a tree or building) you can press
UNDO to select and slew to a different star. Once centered in the finder, press ENTER. The display will then instruct you to
center the star in the field of view of the eyepiece. When the star is centered, press ALIGN to accept this star as an alignment star.
(There is no need to adjust the slewing rate of the motors after each alignment step. The NexStar automatically selects the best
Enter the month, day and year of your observing session. The display will read
Select Location Select Select Location display. Location Location
Enter Long/Lat, if it is not already displayed. Enter Long/Lat Enter Long/Lat
User Defined instead of the Enter L
User Defined User Defined
Alignment Successful Alignment Successful, and you will hear the Alignment Successful
Enter Long/Lat ong/Lat, and enter the number for that observing
Enter L Enter L ong/Lat ong/Lat
15
: mm/dd/yy