Inability for the telescope align

Do a reset ON THE HAND CONTROLLER AND RELOAD THE LATEST firmware. Make sure you are using a separate 12 volt power pack and NOT the internal batteries.

After the reset do a Calibrate motors-- you must also TRAIN the drives. Read the manual for the procedure. Then take it out and do a two star alignment, using a separate 12 volt power supply.

This scope does NOT need to be polar aligned --

Here is the manual:
http://www.celestron.com/c3/images/files/downloads/1228334587_nexstargt.pdf

This is an ALT AZ goto scope. Read the manual above. You use the hand controller to move the scope in Altitude and Azimuth(left-right).

You must align it on 2 stars in order for it to has successful gotos.

Read the manual above.

Once the scope has taken a GPS fix and knows TIME, and SITE, and you do a two star alignment your alignment stars overide any automatic alignment issues.

You could turn off the GPS put in Time, Date, and Site, do a two star alignment and everything would be fine. Centering the alignment stars is the "trick". Apparently the scope also finds NORTH OK, or the alignment stars would be way off. Since you pre-level the tripod already the software can FAIL on "tilt" and you still get good gotos.

I would not worry about it, especially since your gotos seem perfectly fine.

Hi,

he first thing you will need to know is does your telescope have a polar axis or not, that is, is it intended to track, or is it merely a point and look, or what we call Alt-Az. Alt means altitude and Az means azimuth, where Alt is the distance above the horizon, and Az is the direction in a circle around the horizon. If you have an Alt-Az mount, just skip the polar alignment step. If you have a polar axis, that is, your telescope is intended to track the stars, then find north, and make sure the polar axis is approximately lined up in that direction. It does not have to be too accurate, but make sure it is pointing pretty close to north. If you are not sure where north is, either use a magnetic compass, or try to find Polaris, the North Star.

Thanks.

The only reason you would want to polar align is to do astro-photography which will be difficult from your location.

Use the scope in normal ALT AZ configuration. Calibrate motors, Train Drives, make sure time, date, site, are set correctly. The Calibrate sensors function sets the magnetic deviation for your SITE. Not really that important because when you center two alignment stars everything is corrected anyway.

So take the wedge off the tripod --- you can still do short duration astro-photography usually not exceeding 12 second exposures and then STACK the images using software.

Most problems tend to be mechanical. Have you 'trained' the drive and set the backlash values? Those 2 can have dramatic effects on pointing accuracy. Also, if the optical tube is not in alignment with the mount, then nothing will work correctly. To check that, have the telescope in Alt-Az configuration, inside the house, loosen the RA lock, and shine a laser pointer on the corrector plate. as the telescope is rotated about the RA, the reflected spot should be steady. Adjust the DEC to minimize the diameter of the circle that is drawn. What is left, is the out-of-true on the DEC axis. That can be adjusted with the tube cradle alignment bolts.

The LX90GPS and other LTN devices use an internal accelerometer to calculate tilt and North. That has nothing to do with the GPS. Sounds like you need to talk to Meade.

My LX90GPS doesn't do North very well, but I can calibrate that out with the two star alignment. THEN the thing points almost perfectly all over the sky. Sorry I couldn't help you more.

Nope! Sounds normal. The GPS is used as the surface point and time refrence, but it still needs the star fixes to orient the axis. 2 star alignment is generally for Alt-Az mounting, while you can use 1 star for rapid setup on a permanent equatorial mount.

Be sure that the Azimuth Axis is Lock, you migth want to try and move the telescope in the Azimuth to make sure it is it is locked. Be carful not to force it. I have seen on some post where the locking part of the Azimuth somtimes breaks. and the Azimuth Axis will just spin freely Locked down or not.

Also had the problem. I found that the LNT did not find north unless the bottom of the Smartfinder is close to parallel with the ground.