Help with Celestron NexStar 8i ?

My friend's NexStar doesn't appear to be working right. We actually read
the manual and went thru the alignment procedure, starting
horzontal/North/leveled, entered proper dates,time (in Central daylight
time which it appears to understand), lat/long and then told it to find
Mars. It misses it by at least 10 degrees. Any suggestions on the likely
problem here? I suspect it isn't the scope design -- it's probably
cockpit error but where? Any help appreciated.

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