Using Alignmaster, Astrotortilla and Cartes Du Ciel to get perfect polar alignment

[mrflib]

Been struggling with this one... I know it should work but I think I'm falling down with Astro Tortilla issuing 'Sync' commands. The goal here is to align in a garden without Polaris being visible and without drift aligning. The other objective is to not need to swap in an illuminated reitcle eye piece.

Quickly, the basic methodology goes something like:

1. Point mount roughly North & load on equipment & connect laptop
   
2. Booting up Alignmaster choose a pair of stars - say Vega and Dubhe
   
3. Using Cartes du Ciel connect to scope and slew to Vega
   
4. Switch to Astro Tortilla, plate solve with the connected camera and issue the 'Re-Slew to target' command [*I think this is the issue]
   
5. Nudge EQAscom to centre Vega in the live view - Backyard EOS has a target overlay
   
6. Repeat Astro Tortilla steps for Dubhe
   
7. Go through the manual bolt adjustment with Alignmaster
   

Last night Alignmaster told me that my polar alignment error was 45 seconds in both directions. Considering where I was I couldn't see Polaris I suspected this was wrong. Sure enough a 60 second sub showed star trails.

* I read that the following settings need to be in EQASCOM when using Alignmaster

Just a word of caution about using EQASCOM in combination with Alignmaster. You must make sure that the EQASCOM pointing model is disabled whilst alignmaster does it's stuff. So star by clearing out any existing model and put EQASCOM into "dialog mode" for alignment. This is because Alignmaster works by issuing a sync and you want this treated as standard ASCOM sync rather than as a trigger to add an alignment points. Once finished with Alignmaster you are free to reload an existing pointing model and switch to "append on sync" mode (if you prefer it).]

So they key point I have noticed here is in order for Astro Tortilla to Re Slew to Target it forces the Sync box to also be ticked. If there was no Sync issued think this might work.

So if anyone can help here it would be really appreciated - I'm trying to only have to touch the scope for manual Alt Az adjustment.

[Gib007]

The way I do it, in order, is the following:

1. If still daylight and cannot see Polaris, use Google Sky Map to know more or less precisely where Polaris should be. Point mount in that direction. If Polaris is visible to the naked eye, this is even easier.
   
2. Start up EQMod and perform the polar alignment there (slews telescope in Dec to be able to look through polarscope and in RA to correct time). Centre Polaris in polarscope reticule for Polaris. Park to home position when done.
   
3. Unpark telescope, choose a pair of stars in Alignmaster and perform the polar alignment correction here (I choose to correct both axes at once). Perhaps repeat process if original error was large (10' or more in either axis).
   
4. Park telescope to home position. Unpark it and start using Stellarium (or Cartes du Ciel) for GOTO and AstroTortilla for precisely centering objects.
   

Please note the latest version of Alignmaster has an option that you can uncheck, "Use sync commands". If you uncheck this, you need not change EQMod to "Dialog based" as Alignmaster will not sync while doing its job.

[mrflib]

Thank you very much, especially for the Alignmaster settings tip.

The issue I have is that one of the two gardens I set up in has no view of Polaris at all, so I can't use the EQMOD method at all. I have to guess to get as close as possible. So I figured Alignmaster might be a solution - although the further out I am in initial alignment the harder it will be to use the program.

So you use a finder scope to spot the stars you want? One idea I had was to take some exposures of main stars and keep the in a folder for Astro Tortilla to plate solve to. Seems like a quick way to get things bang on for subsequent nights alignment.