Polar Alignment on a tripod - How accurate

[timfuller]

Just looking at polar alignment and wondering how much of each imaging session I should dedicate to chasing polar alignment ?

I have a AZ-EQ6 GT on the factory tripod, Altair Starwave ED80, 50mm Altair Guide Scope and GPColour Cam. Imaging with a Canon EOS1000d.

I am using PHD for guiding and then polar alignment. Guide rig is at 3.75 ArcSec/Pix.

I have my PHD logs for the last guided session I did but cant see if it tells me the PA error ?

Would like to get good PA but need to balance that against spending the whole night chasing PA and not imaging. Also bearing in mind that I take the whole lot inside at the end of the night.

Permanent pier is coming in the next month or so and then can see the benefit of investing the time to get spot on PA.

Thanks

 

[kendg]

Use the Polar Alignment routine on the handset. It works a charm. I do the following

2 star alignment

polar alignment

3 star alignment 

and I'm good to go. The it switch to using eqmod. I use astrtortilla for final positioning.

Guiding seems pretty reasonable for me. Less than +/- .5 arc sec fairly consistently.