Make sure the Dobsonian mount’s base or the tripod is level. Many mounts feature a spirit level to allow you to achieve this.

Make sure the mount is stable and steady, with no movement. One of the main causes of frustration when using a telescope is wobbling or shaking, which will turn any object into an unrecognizable blur.

Align the mount so that its axis is pointing to the nearest celestial pole (this step isn’t necessary for those using a Dobsonian mount, unless they are using setting circles for the Azimuth). Those who are reading this who live in the Northern Hemisphere have it fairly easy - Polaris closely marks the position of the North Celestial Pole.

But those who, like me, live in the Southern Hemisphere have to be a bit creative to find the South Celestial Pole - as follows...

Look for the Southern Cross (Crux), and draw a line with your eyes along the long axis, extending it below the bottom star.

Then draw a line which perpendicularly bisects a line between The Pointers (Alpha and Beta Centauri).

Where these two lines intersect approximates the location of the South Celestial Pole. This allows you to set the Azimuth Setting to 0o for North and 180o for South.

For those using an Equatorial mount, you need to tilt the Right Ascension (Polar) axis up by an angle equal to the Latitude (in degrees) of your viewing location.

The telescope can now be rotated round an axis parallel to the Earth’s and centred on the nearest celestial pole, so that it can track an object as it moves through space. This can be done either by hand or by a motorized/ clockwork drive using the Right Ascension axis.

The longitude of your viewing location needs to be noted so that you can set your RA setting circle, to show your current time in UTC, in order to read the Right Ascension value correctly.

A Telescope mounted on a German Equatorial Mount, shows the Right Ascension and Declination axes.

FIRSTLY

First thing you need to do when you set up your mount is make sure it is level. Most modern GoTo mounts incorporate a bubble level to enable you to do this. If you don’t level the mount then the computer’s horizon will be tilted and the scope won’t be able to find objects you point it at.

When you first turn on the computer/hand control, enter :

a)  the observing location’s co-ordinates.

You can use the Google Earth website to get the co-ordinates of anywhere on the globe -  (not just the major capital cities that come preloaded in the hand controller’s database.)

b) the current date and the time.

The computer needs this information to determine where everything is in the sky and without it you won’t find those faint fuzzies

(Mind you - Knowing how to star hop is still the quickest way to find those well-known deep space objects like The Pleiades, the Great Nebula in Orion, the Eta Carinae Nebula, Alpha Centauri, etc).

Once this information has been entered, carry out the alignment which best suits your conditions—a three point alignment gives the most accurate results, but depending on the night’s seeing conditions you may only be able to use a 2 or even just a 1 point alignment because that’s all you can see through the haze.

If you take the time to do the above steps then you can successfully use a single solar system object alignment with good results—its not easy but I did manage to do it once with patience.

LOL