Polar alignment - Polaris soon disappearing for 6 months!

[mbalkham]

All,

Just a quick one. I'm currently keeping my set-up indoor and decamping to the patio every clear night we're afforded! I have a partially obscured view of polaris through the trees but to date have been able to polar align and then improve the alignment using 2/3 star alignment with Alignmaster (one slight issue is the most open view of the sky is South/East and nearly all of the suggested 2 star alignments require at least one star in an area of the sky I cannot see!).  The other issue I have is in seeing the alignment star on my main camera due to a fairly limited field of view with the Canon 6D on the scope (albeit much wider than CCD users!), often the star is just out of the frame on the first pass of the 2 star alignment process.

Anyway the main question is what do I do once the leave on the trees obscure the polaris view completely? Keen to hear any tips/tricks to get the initial alignment as close as possible prior to the 2/3 star alignment (which will still be possible noting the above issues throughout the year).

Thanks in advance

Matt

[Tinker1947]

Read the NEQ6 manual, the handset allow for PA to be done on any star, it lists them just scroll through until you get one in a area of sky you can view.....

[Ant]

Make sure your finder is aligned to the scope, this will help when the star is slightly out of the FOV.

Polar align while you can, then mark the patio in some way so you can replace the tripod legs in exactly the same position.

Or leave the mount outside all the time and buy a decent cover for it.

Cheers

Ant

[Vox45]

All,

Just a quick one. I'm currently keeping my set-up indoor and decamping to the patio every clear night we're afforded! I have a partially obscured view of polaris through the trees but to date have been able to polar align and then improve the alignment using 2/3 star alignment with Alignmaster (one slight issue is the most open view of the sky is South/East and nearly all of the suggested 2 star alignments require at least one star in an area of the sky I cannot see!).  The other issue I have is in seeing the alignment star on my main camera due to a fairly limited field of view with the Canon 6D on the scope (albeit much wider than CCD users!), often the star is just out of the frame on the first pass of the 2 star alignment process.

Anyway the main question is what do I do once the leave on the trees obscure the polaris view completely? Keen to hear any tips/tricks to get the initial alignment as close as possible prior to the 2/3 star alignment (which will still be possible noting the above issues throughout the year).

Thanks in advance

Matt

Not sure if you solved your issue but you can read the synscan guide section 11.3 "Polar Alignment without Polar Scope"

I too have the same issue and will be testing this procedure as soon as the sky clears

[teifistar]

Not sure if you solved your issue but you can read the synscan guide section 11.3 "Polar Alignment without Polar Scope"

I too have the same issue and will be testing this procedure as soon as the sky clears

Hi,

Last week I bought a new NREQ6 Pro mount. It came with an instruction manual and a Synscan manual which frankly I was very disappointed with. I then saw your post and link to the Synscan manual and I have to say it is much more complete than my version, a lot better. I would have thought I would have had the latest being it is a new mount.

The version number on the front page looks more recent on the download one.

I,m also waiting for some clear nights to attempt to polar align.

Cheers,

Peter.

[Tinker1947]

Not sure if you solved your issue but you can read the synscan guide section 11.3 "Polar Alignment without Polar Scope"

I too have the same issue and will be testing this procedure as soon as the sky clears

This does work  and takes just a few minutes.......

[jambouk]

Minimise your cone error first, as i had lots of cone error and the handset polar alignment was awful. Now i have little cone error, and after a three star alignment, the polar alignment with the handset is much better.

James