Polar Alignment - now stars visible south.

[iapa]

Hi,

My current location means that I have no views from roughly SE to SW (specifically 120 to 210 degrees Az), nothing at all, houses are blocking everything.

From 090-120 I have visibility from about 40 - 90 degrees Alt

How can I get decent polar alignment with those restrictions.

I cant's see low enough, or south enough as far I as understand to do polar alignment

 

[Starlight 1]

I take it you are not in the UK  polar alignment is North .

[kens]

You can use the ASPA function in your handset and/or do a drift alignment with your guiding software e.g. PHD2. There are several software tools for polar alignment that also use imaging: Alignmaster, Astrotortilla etc...

[gonzostar]

If you have AVX mount then you can choose your alignment and calibration stars

[PeterCPC]

The AVX ASPA routine is easy to do and will give a good PA if you follow the instructions.

Peter

[Thalestris24]

Hi

Yeah, if you have no view south-ish you won't be able to drift align properly. You'd be able to adjust Alt by pointing east or west and that might do if you're only imaging due east or west providing you can point the mount true north with the aid of a compass app. I'm not sure what stars are available/required to do an ASPA but that might be a possibility. Failing that, you'd need a polarscope to polar align, assuming you can see Polaris.

Louise

[Chris Murray]

Hi Louise, on my eq6gt i only use the align and then polar align on the hand set then switch over to ascom, after you think its good you can watch the trend in phd, buildings are a pain at times, lights, heat rising ect... do you have to break down every time or is it permenant?   chris,

 

[Chris Murray]

oops sorry ment to say Hi, Iapa,  chris

[iapa]

On 03 March 2016 at 20:49, Starlight 1 said:

I take it you are not in the UK  polar alignment is North .

Maybe I need to look at how PA works - everything I have seen says to do PA, then drift align - to the south - to get really accurate.

• I use PoleMaster; I do that twice, first (mount unloaded) to get the rough PA, and a new rotation measure.
• then physically move the mount to recentre polaris in the the PoleMaster, load it all up, and repeat the process.
• After that, I use SkyPortal with the Celestron Starsense to get an alignment, do the caibration so that the Starsense knows that's central. It does another alignment.
• THEN, I then 'home' the scope, and adjust - using controls on SkyPortal (NOT the Alt/Az bolts) to point the scope back at polaris and centre. Rerun the Starsense alignment.
• Then pick up a four stars alternatin E/W across meridian and align.
• Select polaris as atarget and hope it comes back in camera view

After that, I think I might have a reasonable good alignment for selecting a target.

But, I cant do the dift align that everywhere seems to say I need.

 

 

[StevieDvd]

I don't think drift alignment is mandatory, if you have PoleMaster that should be good enough, if you intend to image then you would probably be using guide software which will sort out any minor inaccuracy.

You say you use Polemaster for a rough measure then physically move the mount to re-centre Polaris then redo the PoleMaster routine, are you referring to the Alt/Az bolts for the move? 

 

[iapa]

13 minutes ago, StevieDvd said:

I don't think drift alignment is mandatory, if you have PoleMaster that should be good enough, if you intend to image then you would probably be using guide software which will sort out any minor inaccuracy.

You say you use Polemaster for a rough measure then physically move the mount to re-centre Polaris then redo the PoleMaster routine, are you referring to the Alt/Az bolts for the move?

 

Hi,

After teh first PoleMAster PA, if shift the tripod legs - I do not adjust Alt/Az at this point.

The reason, or self justification :),  is that after the first pass , Polaris is not always centred on the PoleMaster's lens. I like to have it centred when I start the PA process. The OCD in me.

That's also why I don't load everything up first time, so I can actually move the damned thing

 

[StevieDvd]

Ahh, I see you are just fooling PoleMaster to get to the monitoring part so you can centre Polaris. May be feed that back to QHY so they can enable monitoring before starting so that polaris can be nicely positioned.