Iterative polar alignment

[ronb]

Other than use with Astroplanner I have not seen anything on iterative polar alignment on this forum eg as per http://www.allaboutastro.com/Articlepages/iterativemethod.html.

Has anyone tried it or have any comments on its accuracy?

[perfrej]

Dead link, it appears...

[ronb]

Sorry about that - I copied and pasted the link without testing.

Please try either www.allaboutastro.com/Articlepages/iterativemethod.html or http://www.cloudnet.com/~dsastro/PolarAlignIT/PolarIterative.htm

I was wondering how it compares to drift alignment and whether it is worth tryng.

[robbieince]

I've used iterative before, with an EQ6 and EQMOD - it does work and I feel is quicker and less fiddly than Drift aligning but you need to be eyeball close first and be careful not to overcorrect - I have wasted lots of time due to that..... For me. it has been superseded by the new handset based polar alignment assist routines that sysnscan copied from celestron and a bit of phd assisted drift.

[ronb]

Many thanks Rob. I was unsure as to which method is easiest and more accurate so I'll give the Celestron All Star method a try first. I strongly suspect my polar alignment needs improving - as well as my mount's polar alignment!

[Martin-Devon]

Alignmaster is another excellent & quick software polar alignment method - there's a great video on YouTube about it