Sao53993 is this mornings star target to get close to Comet Panstarrs

In the event I cannot get the mount to connect or the software to work quickly I'll simply plug in the coordinates of a star which is very close to Panstarrs and take a photo then perhaps move the telescope a little and take a few more photos.

Right now the mount is a little bit of a challenge as well to operate because we don't have all the parameters setup right. The slow speed slew is almost as fast as it could probably be. I think it could be that the mount was not set to the correct mode for slow slewing, or the moving of the mount with a button push on the Losmandy controller. I can resync on a nearby bright star first with the Meade using the Losmandy controller, also more properly called the Gemini goto setup.

Losmandy is the name of the mount, Gemini is the name of the controller.

In any event, it's late I have to take a nap and hope my alarm wakes me up and the sky will cooperate.





Comet is above the star in the center.

Start name and technical data for a goto mount is as follows.






This of course is data a person with a goto mount could plug in to see the star. They just plug in the SAO number or one of the other numbers to have the controller recognize the star.

If you were looking visually at a dark sky site, you'd look for a brighter star and look for the comet which is brighter. One would not visually look for a magnitude 7 start to find a nearby brighter comet which was about magnitude 3.8.

The comet in the same diagram is a little bit above the star and to the right.

(see diagram below)


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