Alt az star alignment stars

[jambouk]

With equatorial mounts, using Polaris as n alignment star when star aligning for GOTO  is not recommended as it doesn’t really help in the RA axis alignment. But when undertaking a star alignment for GOTO with a fork mounted scope (not on a wedge), is Polaris a good star to use or not?

James

[Demonperformer]

I always found the important thing was to pick stars that had significantly different altitudes and azimuths, preferably on either side of my target in both directions. So, at about 50 degrees alt, Polaris was fine, if I was going for something in the northern half of the sky, but preferred something else if I was looking southwards.

[GlenM]

Good advice.

 

Glen.