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Polar Alignment

Kenza

By Kenza
in Imaging - Discussion

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Kenza

Kenza

Posted
Posted

Ok, I've tried for a couple of days now to polar align and track but ended up with nothing. Can somebody please help me with the correct procedure to polar align and guide? I have tried using two different instructions for alignment, one which I got with the mount and another which I found on the internet. Both are completely different! If someone can give me a step by step procedure which they regularly use and which can function with my setup.

Here is my setup and my options:

EQ6 Syntrek Mount

Starlight Express Lodestar Guider with the Lodestar Software

Laptop which connects both the Guider and the Mount

I have downloaded ASCOM so I can use EQMOD

I have Starry Night Pro Plus but i don't know if I can use it to control my Mount

I have also downloaded PHD and Polar Finder

Also, my current location prevents me from using Drift Alignment so that is not an option.

Thanks in advance!

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JamesF

JamesF

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I managed to guide acceptably well for 90 second exposures at 1500mm focal length the other night without really nailing the polar alignment, so you may well get away without that. I did check the polar scope was correctly aligned and do a polar alignment using that, but a three-star align with the handset still claimed I was up to 10 arcminutes out. PHD did a perfectly fine job of guiding without further messing around.

James

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chrisshillito

chrisshillito

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EQMOD has a feature that assists polar alignment via the polar scope - i.e. it puts the polar scope reticule in the correct positioned for your location and time. Some folks find this is good enough for their needs, others use it a a first step prior to drift alignment or using other software solutions such as alignmaster etc.

Chris.

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Gib007

Gib007

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I use EQMod for polar alignment and it's absolutely excellent. I do tend to do one iteration (sometimes two if I feel like it) of Alignmaster afterwards though. Having aligned the polarscope pretty well at home, I find the first iteration of Alignmaster tells me my polar alignment is off by very, very little (I believe around 5 arcminutes).

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dmahon

dmahon

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Syntrek / Synscan, makes no difference with EQMOD. The only difference between the two is the handset, and we're replacing the handset with a computer.

Best thing I ever did to my mount was connect it to the computer. You'll want an EQDIR adapter, which you can make yourself or buy ready done. Something like this.

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Kenza

Kenza

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Syntrek / Synscan, makes no difference with EQMOD. The only difference between the two is the handset, and we're replacing the handset with a computer.

Best thing I ever did to my mount was connect it to the computer. You'll want an EQDIR adapter, which you can make yourself or buy ready done. Something like this.

How stupid of me. I forgot that the computer takes control. I already have an EQDIR adapter. Thanks!
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Kenza

Kenza

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I've found two ill. reticle eyepieces from orion. One is the standard 12.5mm eyepiece and then there is the 20mm ICE with 70 Deg apparent field. On one hand, the 12.5mm, since it is a higher power eyepiece should be more precise than the lower power one when centering stars. But on the other hand, the 20mm and 70 Deg field makes it much easier to locate the alignment star. Am I right?

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Kenza

Kenza

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I just found out that the 20mm eyepiece has single crossline reticle unlike the 12.5mm. Is there a big difference between a double and a single crossline reticle? I presume that it's much easier to center a star with a double line.

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mrflib

mrflib

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Before plate solving, I used one of these:

http://www.iankingim...duct.php?id=673

Get it approximately central with a standard wide field eyepiece, then use the reticle. By the time you're centring the second star, it's visible on the reticle eyepiece so no need to swap again

I've been using Astro Tortilla for play solving and it is excellent. I saw it had a polar align feature and had a go. It tells me how far out I am in both axis.

However, say it tells me I'm 4 degrees too high does anyone have a reliable method for lowering 4 degrees on an EQ6 or is it just have a stab trial and error?

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Kenza

Kenza

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Ok, I managed to polar align via EQMOD. It was quite easy actually. I also found out that the quality of your alignment is never the same. One night I tracked for 4 minutes without star trailing while on another night I tracked for only 2 and a half minutes. Anyway, i am satisfied, because now I know I can do it, just not every time.

But the thing that's eluding me is guiding. I have tried to guide a couple of nights now but all I ended up with were shots of star trails. I do the standard procedure in PHD (which is really simple)

and start to guide. The green square moves with the star as it's supposed to, but then after 1-2 minutes an error message pops up: RA calibration failed. Star did not move enough. What does that mean?

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