Eq5 mount

[NIGHTBOY]

I've just watched a video about the eq5 and lining it up with the North Star.

In order for the mount to track, does the North Star have to stay in view of the mounts reticule at all times? The reason I ask is because my back garden faces south.

Thanks all.

[jambouk]

Your polar scope needs to line up with the north star, but it's not dead centre in the polar scope reticle, but that's another story.

You can set up anywhere, even if you can't see the north star, but you'll have to employ another method to get your mount "polar aligned"; you could get very close just by having the mount pointing north, and having already worked out how much elevation you need for your location (by carrying the mount to the front and looking at the north star).

So it is possible. But will mean a bit more effort than normal.

James

[jambouk]

The method you'd likely need to employ if you can't see polaris is called drift aligning. It sounds complicated when you first read about it, but it's less scary in real life depending which method you use. I've played with it a few times and i can cope.

James

[John]

Once you have aligned with Polaris the mount should stay with the polar axis pointing towards the star and the scope will move around that . For visual use I only used to align the north leg of the tripod roughly pointing towards Polaris or even just north and that seemed to generally be good enough. For imaging the alignment needs to be much more precise though.

Dobs are so much simpler !

[ollypenrice]

Maybe I'm wrong but I suspect a misunderstanding here. The north star does have to stay in the right part of the reticle, yes. That's the polarscope recicle. Once it's there it won't move as you move the main scope on the mount's axes, though.

If you have an undriven telescope of any kind, including a Dob, and point it at Polaris, Polaris will stay in the view because it hardly moves in the sky.

If, however, you have a driven mount which is incorrectly aligned then Polaris will move in the main scope's eyepiece due to that error.

Olly

[Tonys]

You could use a compass to find north and then point the eq5 mount head so the front points northwards. Assuming the ground is horizontal, you then just set the elevation to your latitude (eg in my case 52 degrees). This gives a reasonable result for visual. Be careful not to bring the compass too near the mount though.

[Tonys]

Just remembered that the Eq5 tripod has a spirit level, so you can vary the tripod leg extensions to get the mount horizontal if the ground slopes significantly. This is to get maximum accuracy out of the latitude scale setting.