Check what the mount was told before suspecting what it can do: time and time zone, location, levelling, and whether the alignment stars you centred were the ones it asked for. One wrong input skews the whole model consistently.
A GoTo mount knows nothing about the sky except what it was told, so every failure is an input problem until proved otherwise.
Check the clock first
A few minutes of error rotates the whole sky by a corresponding amount, and a time zone or daylight-saving mistake rotates it by far more. This is the commonest single cause.
Check the location
Latitude and longitude entered roughly, or left at a factory default, produce pointing that is wrong in a consistent direction.
Check the alignment stars
The mount names a star; the sky is dark and the names are unfamiliar. Centring a different bright star nearby is easy to do and the mount will accept it without complaint, building its model around the wrong point.
Check levelling and balance
Most routines assume the mount is level and use that assumption. A visibly tilted mount points worse on one side of the sky than the other, which is a useful diagnostic in itself.
The questions that keep arriving
It was fine last night. What changed?
Usually the clock, the daylight-saving setting or the battery that held the settings. A mount that has lost power since the last session has usually lost its stored alignment with it.
Should I nudge each object by hand instead?
Only as a stopgap. If the mount offers a synchronise function, centring a known bright star and synchronising on it corrects the model for the rest of the evening.
Last reviewed 17 September 2026