Polar Alignment portability

[Andrew Singleton]

Hello

I have a question about polar alightment.

I will at some point in the future be buying an equatorial mount with the hope of doing some imaging. I have a garden available to me but its in a funny shape. I can observe various areas of the sky but have to prop the telescope in different locations of the garden. One such example is unfortunately the North Star. This works with the basic 2 star alignment alt az mount I have but I would love to take advantage of the longer exposures a guided equatorial mount would provide.

This may be a silly question and I suspect the answer is probably no but... Can you polar align an equatorial mount, then pick it up and move it about in about a 10 yard radius, do a 3 star alignment and still get good results?

I really hope the answer is yes because the amount of sky I could use when the North Star is in view would be seriously limited if I couldn't move the mount!

Andy

[DoctorD]

Hi

Moving the mount will require new polar alignment.

You do not need to be able to see Polaris to to polar alignment you can try drift alignment if you can get it somewhere near.

HTH

Paul

[lennylovit]

sorry no , kick the leg of the tripod by accident and you have to start all over again , with a/p you need good polar align Lenny

[lennylovit]

duplicate post sorry

[Andrew Singleton]

OOk thanks. Looks like I'll have to do some reading on drift alignment then, failing that then try and persuade the neighbours to chop down the trees! Ultimately I think I'm going to have buy a portable setup and get out and about.