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Polar alignment...a necessity?


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hi all,

starting to get to grips with my Celestron 130EQ now, and really enjoying getting out in the back garden and ticking off the items on my celestial 'must see' list.

Up until now, and i'm sure i'm not alone in doing this, I take the scope out, let it cool down and manually scan it about by gently pushing it, using the slow-mo cables for fine tuning and tracking after i find my target. I'm starting to get the hang of using the focuser properly, and what eyepiece is best for what, but haven't yet attempted to polar align my scope.

I'm not looking to start imaging just yet - let me at least get acquainted with the beautiful night sky before i go taking nude pictures!! - but i'm sure i'll be going down that path sooner or later. With my current (basic) use in mind, do i really need to polar align my scope every time i take it out into the garden?

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ive just got my declination set to roughly my location 52 degrees. and i know where north is , so plonk the mount down roughly pointing that way. thats it for me. i follow objects fine.

unless your doing long exposure pictures ,then id imagine its critical.

how ever if your planning astrophotography later,its worth a little practice i suppose.

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The more accurately you point the polar axis towards north....................the longer objects will stay in view. I started off with a Celestron 90EQ and the moon raced across my FOV in seconds. A few simple tweaks of the polar axis and the Moon was in view for about 8mins without having to touch the RA slo-mo control.

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If you use a compass to set up roughly you'll be ok. if you can put in another 5 mins just line up the pole star roughly looking through the hole in your mount that holds the polar alignment eye peice. The closer you can get to alignment the longer things will stay in the EP and the easier they will be to track manually. It particularly helps with planets and the moon all of which tend to race across the sky when under magnification. It doesn't have to perfect and you don't even need to use a polar scope but a rough alignment through the polar alignment hole will make life alot less frustrating when manouvering around and chasing the planets :)

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I polar align my scope every time I use it, it does not take that long to do and the more you do it the quicker you get at it. It makes visual work much easier when using High Magnification but is is must for photo capture. Just do what's good for you and enjoy your scope time.

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I do roughly polar align my 130eq every time - but with this mount I sometimes find that I am rubbing up against the motor drive. I understand (hope) that this is a fault with this mount. So sometimes I do have to shift the mount to get the scope to go where I want.

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Keeping the mount level is important if you can do it, as is polar aligning but only to make it easier to keep the object in the field of view, unless you are imaging and then it becomes vital to polar align very very very accurately.

If what you're doing works for you, well... it works for you! As you get more experience you will want to polar align properly and believe me, it takes ages at first and can spoil the fun. Stick with it though and you will get there sooner or later. No need to get hung up about it. If I do any visual stuff, I rarely polar align accurately, just more or less works for me too - especially in the winter!

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