Polar Alignment on Skywatcher with EQ5

[astromartian]

Well I planned to use them to find objects in the sky before I read that it is nearly impossible to actually use them due to lack of accuracy.

I was trying to lock the R.A. setting circle to find the 'home' position of my mount but apparently if you lock it in any other position apart from 0 it doesn't work properly so can't do that either.

[Sammyb]

Yes. That was my thoughts. I have an EQ5 and have never attempted to use the setting circles.

[Velvet]

I have an EQ5. I set the elevation to the approximate latitude (just over 50 for me) then use my iPhone's compass to get the mount's front leg pointing North.

As Catweazel said, if you do it at twilight it's fairly simple. I find that when I look through the polarscope Polaris is usually already in the FOV and I can then just adjust the alt/az bolts to get Polaris where I want it (I usually get a good idea of where Polaris should be using Polarfinder before I go out).

After twilight, it's a bit more of a nuisance as the EQ5 mount does not have polarscope illumination, so you need to shine a red light down it.

My biggest niggle is that my polarscope is slightly off axis when screwed in. This means that when rotated, there is a slight "wobble" in the image, although the crosshair stays in the same spot in the image.

Does anybody know if a centering ring would help in this case?

I had this problem with my EQ5 also. I cured mine by unscrewing the polarscope, than putting a correct sized o ring on, then screwing it back in and this tightened everything up and no wobble now. New EQ5 unscrews, the older EQ5 i think may have a grub screw in to loosen before you unscrew.

Velvet

[wookie1965]

On 08/10/2012 at 08:35, Velvet said:

I had this problem with my EQ5 also. I cured mine by unscrewing the polarscope, than putting a correct sized o ring on, then screwing it back in and this tightened everything up and no wobble now. New EQ5 unscrews, the older EQ5 i think may have a grub screw in to loosen before you unscrew.

Velvet

Do you know what size O ring is please.

 

[spillage]

With my old eq5 I just pointed it roughly north. With the mount in the home position looked along the top of the mount and again as best I could lined up polaris.

If you have an android phone down synscanlnit from the playstore. This will give you all the info you need.