A simple question about manual positioning of the telescope
<Hi,
A simple question about manual positioning of the telescope from the Control Panel: What are the correct formats for values in the Equatorial RA and DEC fields? For RA it works fine with 05:41:15 etc. but how do I enter a negative value in the DEC field such as -02:25:43? The positive value 02:25:43 is accepted but if I put a minus sign in front I get an error message.
The set of coordinates are for IC 434 which I wanted to move the telescope to yesterday night.
I have search the help files for an instruction on the field formats as well as this forum, but unfortunately I have not found an answer, hence this question.
I am not sure off hand. There is nothing wrong with the formatting you noted above. When I enter that exact DEC value into the CP, there are no issues. Can you detail what error you see?
Hi Ken,
Thanks for your answer. Now that I know the correct format I will experiment a bit. You may absolutely be correct about the national keyboard beeing an issue. You may remember that I ran into a similar problem some years ago where SGP and the Swedish Windows disagreed about the use of a comma and a period as the decimal separator. That particular quirk made it impossible for me to use Platesolve 2/3, but the problem was solved by using ASTAP instead.
If I find out anything similar about the minus sign I will report back.
All the best,
Rolf J, Huddinge
@Ken A short update on the positioning problem: I experimented with the Control Panel positioning but could not find a way to enter a negative DEC value. I only get the enclosed error message:
“Error: (Invalid Dec (degrees). Please correct and try again.”
This may very well be something related to my Swedish Windows 10 OS, so I suggest we leave it as is for now and let us see what happens in your next major release. I also have other ways of positioning the telescope, so this was a mere test of a way that would have been convenient if it had function for me.
