Polar Alignment guide using an NEQ 6 Pro mount

[stevebb]

After struggling big time trying to understand Polar Alignment with manuals and guides making me believe they were written in hexadecimal, I was kindly shown by a gentleman on these forums one way how it can be done (Thank you so much Fenriz).

So I have written a guide for dummies complete with photographs and if it helps just one person then it was time well spent.

To the Forum Mods, please feel free to move this within the forum if you find it useful.

Polar Alignment

Always good to contribute something back

Best wishes,

Steve

[brantuk]

Great article thanks Steve - I'm sure a lot of folks are going to benefit from that - me included lol

[stevebb]

You are more than welcome, I will be adding quite a few more "dummies guides" as time goes on - there are already a few more on my homepage for the astro photographers.

We all have to learn somewhere and if I can keep on top and document the successes and pointing out the pitfall's during this learning curve and in turn, it helps others then it is all worthwhile

Best wishes,

Steve

[hemihaggis]

exellent work , thanks very much

[Brinders]

What an excellent and well written guide. I no longer have my EQ6 Pro mount, but if I did I would have found your guide invaluable - well done.

Brinders

[bcfcciderhead]

That is one of the best guides i have seen even I can follow it.

I have only been doing a rough alignment by popping a laser pen in the polar scope "hole" and having it point at Polaris, works for just "goto" observing work but i am now moving on to photo's so will need to be more "spot" on,

i could never understand how Pole Finder worked and how to set it up, but now i think i can do it, plus this can be done in the daylight!!.

Thanks very much Steve this is why i love this site and look forward to more.

[stevebb]

Oh wow !!

You are all very welcome, I am really pleased people are finding it useful

Then again, that is what this hobby is all about - helping each other

Here are a few more basic Tutorials I have just written this time for astrophotography - primarily to help a small bunch of friends including myself to get started. They are not all out guides but just enough for a starting point ...

(attn Forum Mods - if you would like these splitting into separate posts let me know - but only if you think they are useful)

Subs & Frames - what are they all about, how to capture them and how to use them

BackyardEOS - Basic intro to operating this amazing imaging program for Canon cameras

More guides to come ....

Steve

[Valley]

Well written, easily understood guides for a noob like me, bookmarked!

Look forward to more, thank you.

Paul.

[UnderTheRain]

Getting my neq6 in Jan so thanks for the guide I'm sure I'll be needing the help (bookmarked).

:-)

Brian

[stevebb]

You are very welcome Brian - if you still have trouble then please give me a shout and I shall try to help

Steve

[carastro]

Well written, especially for newbies.

A couple of comments.

If you are wanting to have the tripod legs extended, you need to extend them BEFORE you do all this procedure.

I find it is best to have a tripod leg facing towards polaris, rather than the gap between the two. For two reasons:

1. It is easier to stand back from the tripod and look up at polaris and follow that down in a straight visual line to your tripod and see whether the middle leg (pointing north) is exactly half way between the other two and in line with polaris.

2. If you have a single leg just in the place where you need to kneel to look through the polarscope, it does get in the way.

All down to personal choice really, but just thought I'd pass these thoughts on.

Carole

[stevebb]

Hi Carole,

Many thanks indeed you are perfectly correct.

Not sure if it is just my NEQ6 but I do not have a leading leg but instead a trailing leg ... hmmm sums me up to a tee some friends would say

I will have to look again at my setup just in case I have overlooked something silly during my own setting up though I know the EQ6 head only goes on one way around and as you have the same mount I think I might have missed something !

Many thanks Carole for your kind comments

Best wishes,

Steve

[carastro]

Hi Steve,

The stopper rod (that screws into the tripod base plate) should have a choice of two positions.

(This is the rod that the bolts you labelled as (1) push up against).

Unscrew it and move it to the other position and your legs should turn around so you can have the single one pointing to polaris.

Carole

[stevebb]

Oh wow thank you so much Carole, I never knew that.

Thank you so much

Steve

[carastro]

Great, as you already said we are all here to help each other.

I had help when I started out and like you also said

Always good to contribute something back

I have actually written a "how to" page on my website as well, on How to image with a DSLR (for dummies) at the request of a couple of people I have been helping. You'll see my instructions on how to polar align, also using Polarfinder. I didn't go into such detail on balancing as you though.

Carole

[stevebb]

Carole,

Your web pages are superb, I am so pleased to find them. We have the same mount, same modded DSLR and same optics and your photographs are stunning. I am a long way behind the learning curve but it is great to see what could be possible if it all comes together.

Many thanks for sharing and also your tutorials - excellent reading

Steve

ps was looking for somewhere to leave feedback on your page but I apologise I could not find an area.

[Jessun]

Steve thanks for the guide, very well written, easy to follow and fun to read. I am new to this hobby so I've been reading all I could find on each subject that turned into some sort of obstacle.

Now take what I say with a pinch of salt (newbie salt haha) but this is my only thought:

You say in your guide that you level the mount. In most discussions I've seen, the term level the mount usually means the idea that the base of it has to be level - i.e. using the bubble on the tripod or other measure. This I have understood to be a pointless excercise apart from perhaps convenience and in extreme cases prevent the whole thing from toppling over or maybe just putting uneven pressure on the tripod legs in non-ideal ground causing one side to sink faster...

So I really like the fact that you don't pay this a great deal of attention, but when you talk about levelling the mount you are in actual fact adjusting the RA and DEC scales to compensate for a non-level mount! A totally brilliant idea in itself, just perhaps confusing calling it levelling. (Search for Rat-box and see what comes up!)

So again great read! Thanks for writing all your guides!

/Jessun

[Starwalker]

Steve, Just received my NEQ6 and with your great contribution will make things fall in place so much quicker! The Mountain has just become a hill. Thanks

[stevebb]

You are more than welcome - I see you are in west yorks - I am not too far away in Knaresborough. If you do get stuck give me a shout and I could pop over

Steve

[Starwalker]

Your on Steve thanks for the offer, I'm in Thorpe Audlin

[Freddie]

Hi Steve, nice couple of guides there. I'm sure people will find them useful.

One comment though, it looks like you are indicating that flats can be put in a library with darks etc which is not the case. Maybe you didn't mean this but I think that is the way it reads (maybe it's just me). Thanks for putting the effort into writing them though.

[skywatcher58gb]

Hi Steve

Nice claer article with good pics, one point I may make is that you have assumed that the polar scope is aligned with the mount. On one of your pics you can see the small allen key adjustment screws on the polar scope that allow this. I have found with my EQ3 mount that when the mount is spun 360 degrees while looking through the polar scope the center does a circular pattern, this needs adjustment to ensure when spun the polar alignment scope stays bang in the center through the full circle.

Dave

[k duffy]

just got my NEQ 6 and after watching loads of youtube vids  which were doing my head in came across your guide on this Forum, brilliant. and i may switch the legs as Carole has stated, Thanks

[m37]

Brilliant stuff mate, cheers for sharing your experiences. This is a brilliant example of a collective mind working on a problem; you took the trouble to kick it off and others chip in refinements until we have a really great solution. Something the internet does very well but is often undervalued.

Nice one.

I thought I would offer my method to see if you could take anything useful from it.

1. Set up as per your instructions and get Polaris in the polarscope.

2. Using all/az bolts, centre polaris exactly on the cross hair

3. Using alt ONLY move polaris up so it is on the polar alignment circle. You now have Polaris EXACTLY at the 12 o clock position (top of the circle)

4. Now move polarscope ring by hand so it is at zero

5. Check current position of Polaris and rotate the RA axis so it is at that reading e.g. if it reads 3h 20 to next ascension, move to 3h20 on the setting circle

6. Using alt/az bolts only, centre polaris in the circle

I was basically trying to come up with something that removed the human error when you are aligning by eye. I did think of finding out the width of the polaris target circle then compensating half of this so you could use the point of its intersection with the larger circle to get even more accuracy.

Chris

[stevebb]

Just a quick note, the homepages have been updated - link is still active on the old pages but the new link is here  http://stevebb.com/polar-alignment-tutorial.html