Sky & Telescope - October 2020 - 68

S&T Test Report

adapter that replaces the need for the
USB cable (see page 63 of last August's
issue). The declination-axis housing
also has the power on/off switch with
a rather bright, red LED indicator, and
a "snap" port for a remote-release cable
that will operate Canon EOS cameras
via the hand control or through the USB
computer connection.
The SynScan hand control is the
most straightforward way to operate
the EQ8-R Pro as a standalone mount.
But there are also free software apps
that run on Windows computers and
Android devices (for USB and WiFi connections to the mount) and iOS devices
(for WiFi only). I tested only the Windows version running on a laptop.
The SynScan has most of the features
and databases that have become pretty
much standard fare for Go To telescopes. The manual does a good job
explaining the hand control's setup and
operation with one small exception that
I encountered in the beginning. Initialization starts with entering date, time,
and location, all of which remain in
the controller's memory for future use
with the exception of the time, which
always defaults to 8 p.m. on power up.
This means you only have to change the
date and enter the correct time when
you start the mount on another night,
assuming your location is the same. If
you're into luxury, there's a $175 GPS
module that plugs into the SynScan
controller and will update the necessary

68

OCTOBER 2 02 0 * SK Y & TELESCOPE

W The SynScan hand control has illuminated
buttons and a backlit LCD panel that's easily
visible at night or in full daylight.

information each time you power up
the mount.
Sky alignment of the mount begins
by sending the mount automatically to
its home position, which places the telescope above the polar axis and aimed at
the celestial pole. And from there you
perform a 1-, 2-, or 3-star alignment.
The more stars you use, the better the
Go To pointing accuracy is if the mount
is only roughly polar aligned. Since
most of my testing was done with the
mount accurately polar aligned in my
observatory, a 1-star sky alignment was
always sufﬁcient. Furthermore, since

I usually shut down the mount with
a park command, no alignment was
needed when I powered up on the next
night and resumed observing from the
parked position.
As for that bump in the road during
my ﬁrst sky initialization, it was the
question "Renew H.P.O.?" that appeared
on the SynScan display after I ﬁnished
my star alignment. There was no mention of that in the manual. I simply
selected "no" as my answer and went
about my observing. Later I noodled out
that H.P.O. stands for "home position
offset," and it enters a correction (if
needed) to correlate the aim of your
telescope with the mount's ﬁ xed home
position. This makes the mount's pointing very accurate when you start from
the home position - an important feature if the mount is operated remotely.
The Windows app worked well, and
it does offer some features that are not
available with the hand controller. But
by itself the app offered little advantage
for observing over operating the mount
from the SynScan controller. Furthermore, the controller has more catalogs
of celestial objects and is thus better for
Go To observing. One advantage of the
app that I did use occasionally was the
option of selecting Venus as a daytime
alignment "star" when initializing the
Sky & Telescope - October 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - October 2020
