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PHD2 Drift Align pre-reqs


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Am thinking of finally getting round to setting up my pier mounted AVX tonight with a bit of drift alignment using PHD2, as have had a look at the process and it appears to be rather natty.

Quick question before hand, am guessing that the margin for mis-alignment between main imaginf scope and guidscope has to be minimal to get best PA results?

Am fairly sure that both are well aligned to each other, but was goin got do the following to check and was after a quick sanity check before I went ahead.

1 - Using AstroTorilla, get main scope aligned and synced on a fairly bright and obvious star (was thinking Vega)

2 - Have PHD2 loop and then adjuct thumbscrews so as to get said star centred in teh FOV of guidecam

3 - Carry out PHD2 drift align and then secure mount down tighter that a tight thing.

Is this OK and also, does PHD2 have a bullseye or crosshair overlay that will make the alignment easier?

Cheers

PS - The mount is roughly aligned as have used a Polar Scope to get it in, just need to get it finely tuned now.

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Just had a quick Google on this and you can indeed PA, but it does appear to be with it's foilbels, in that it can give different errors of misallignment without even moving the mount and doing iterations of it.

May give it a go, but am thinking that I may prefer the PHD2 method as you can actually see what is going on and also have a visual indication that you are indeed moving the mount int eh correct direction and by correct amounts.

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Makes sense, I just asked. I've got a lot of irons in the fire right now. I haven't drifted as I am lucky enough to have the Ioptron polar scope, which gets me reasonably close quickly. I looked at the drift feature in BYN also and really like the twin line reticule and real time. Interested to see how you make out.--Jack

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No worries Jack.....thanks for pointing it out.  Another 'hidden feature' for me to look at.

I have the Celestron Polar Scope, which has had me fairly close, but being the great tinkering engineer that I am, I always want to improve on somehting, so am going to give this a go.

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Drift aligning with PHD2 is the surest way to get your PA spot on, far better than any polar 'scope, which should only be seen as the zeroth iteration. Don't worry about slight misalignment between the guide and imaging 'scopes, PA isn't concerned about that, you only have to consider it when doing your star alignment, a totally different thing.

Just be aware that if you're pier is off level then you'll have to do several iterations of altitude and azimuth drift but won't affect the final PA.

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