Two star alignment, Quick-align – Celestron NEXSTAR 4 User Manual

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procedure for that star. When the telescope has been aligned to both stars the display will read Alignment Successful

Alignment Successful

Alignment Successful,

and you are now ready to find your first object.

If the wrong star was centered and aligned to, the NexStar display will read Align Failed

Align Failed

Align Failed. Press UNDO to begin the

alignment procedure again.

If you are not sure if the correct star was centered, always remember that the alignment star will be the brightest

star nearest the field of view of the finder. There may be other fainter stars visible that are closer to the center of the
Star Pointer, but the actual alignment star will be obviously brighter than any other star in the area.

For the best possible pointing accuracy, always center the alignment stars using the up arrow button and the right

arrow button. Approaching the star from this direction when looking through the eyepiece will eliminate much of the
backlash between the gears and assure the most accurate alignment possible.

Two Star Alignment

With the two-star alignment method, the NexStar requires the user to know the positions of only two bright stars in order to
accurately align the telescope with the sky and begin finding objects. Here is an overview of the two-star alignment
procedure:

Once the NexStar is powered on, use the Up and Down scroll keys to select Two

Two

Two-

-Star Align

Star Align

Star Align, and press

ENTER.

The NexStar display will ask you to move the telescope tube until it is horizontal to the ground. To do this, use
the direction keys (3) to move the telescope until it is roughly level with the ground. Press ENTER.

The SELECT STAR 1

SELECT STAR 1

SELECT STAR 1 message will appear in the top row of the display. Use the Up and Down scroll keys (10) to

select the star you wish to use for the first alignment star. Press ENTER.

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 and carefully center the star in the eyepiece.

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

Alignment Successful

Alignment Successful, and you will hear the

tracking motors turn-on and begin to track.

Quick-Align

Quick-Align allows you to input all the same information as you would for the AutoAlign procedure. However, instead of
slewing to two alignment stars for centering and alignment, the NexStar bypasses this step and simply models the sky based
on the information given. This will allow you to roughly slew to the coordinates of bright objects like the moon and planets
and gives the NexStar the information needed to track objects in altazimuth in any part of the sky. Quick-Align is not meant
to be used to accurately locate small or faint deep-sky objects or to track objects accurately for photography. Note: Once a
Quick-Align has been done, you can use the Re-alignment feature (see below) to improve your telescopes pointing and
tracking accuracy.

To use Quick-Align:

Select Quick-Align from the alignment options.

Use the arrow buttons to level the tube and position the telescope tube towards north and press ENTER.

The hand control will then ask you to input all the same time and location information as you would for the
AutoAlign procedure.

Once entered, the NexStar will model the sky based on this information and display Alignment Successful

Alignment Successful

Alignment Successful.

Observing