Polar Alignment

[jACK101]

The site I use at home is open only to 1 quadrant of the sky from East through to just a little beyond South. I would like to try astrophotography, but I am not sure if I can do a satisfactory polar alignment under these circumstances. Can anyone clarify?

 

Thanks

 

Jack

[AKB]

Should be fine for drift alignment.  First to the south for AZ correction, then east for EL.  Some iteration, perhaps.

 

[cjdawson]

Yep, you should be ok for drift alignment.   In addition, you'll probably end up wanting to do multi night image sessions.  It's perfectly fine to do this. To help realign the image on follow up nights, you'd benefit from using a technique called plate solving.   The software that you would use for it is called AstroTortilla.

[Owmuchonomy]

As above but what mount do you have and does it have Synscan?  If so you can short cut to a pretty good alignment using the handset and then refine with drift align.

[jACK101]

2 hours ago, Owmuchonomy said:

As above but what mount do you have and does it have Synscan?  If so you can short cut to a pretty good alignment using the handset and then refine with drift align.

Thanks for your replies. I have a Celestron CPC925 on a tripod at present. I intend to buy the HD Wedge and fit the telescope to a pier in an Obsy which I have yet to build. I did not want to commit too much until I was sure everything would work OK.

 

Jack