Not slewing to correct location

Sequence Generator Plate Solving
1

So, I’ve been slowly migrating my old laptop settings to my new Eagle. All going well but I’ve had a night to write off tonight and wondering if anyone can help.

Ive set up platesolve 2 with all the same settings I had on my laptop. My image scale should be correct (1.87 based on a 4.54 um from my Atik 460 using a 500mm focal length). Plate solve will solve multiple images from astrobin so no issues there. The issues I’m having are two fold. Firstly, when I enter astrobin coordinates, the mount doesn’t slew anywhere near the target. I’ve checked different targets in case it was the image. I’ve never had any issues with the mount before, it’s like it doesn’t know where it is. I’ve always gone straight into SGP and it’s always worked.

Second issue I’ve had is that platesolve won’t even do a solve and sync from starting position (pointing north with counterweight down towards polaris). It will do a blind solve using an installed copy of ansvr but this won’t help it to slew where it needs to be.

Any thoughts on this? I’ve ruled out focus as this is perfect and polar alignment is also accurately done with a Polemaster.

2

First issue - it appears the mount doesn’t know where it is pointing. SGP just send coordinates to the mount. It is up to the mount to resolve them.
Second issue - Doing a plate solve near the pole is known to be problematic.

What I do and I suggest you do, is aim your mount somewhere near the zenith and then do a blind solve and sync. That will tell the mount where it is and subsequent slews should be close.

3

It’s almost certainly a bad idea to sync a mount here. Take your RA and swing it through 360 degrees and you’ll notice that the image remains generally unchanged (only rotated) thus the position for any of those areas is the same. This often causes the next slew to be “crazy”.

For the first problem maybe try a Blind Solve and Sync after moving the mount from the pole to see if that works.

Thanks,
Jared