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Polar Alignment with All Sky Plate Solve (ASPS)?


aatdalton

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I was working on getting plate solving up and running with APT the other day and noticed ASPS has a tool called "Fast Polar Alignment (beta)." Has anyone used this tool before or know how it works? I can't seem to find any documentation on it. 

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I haven't used it, but my best guess is that it uses about the same procedure as sharpcap and ekos. The ekos polar alignment procedure takes three images of the polar region, with 30 degrees ra rotation between them and plate solves these. It then uses the solutions to determine the centre of ra rotation. The difference between this centre and the celestial pole is your pa error. The routine than places a marker and line on your last image to show you how to move the mount to get polar alignment.

 

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6 minutes ago, knobby said:

Slightly off topic but I can imagine someone somewhere that thought this PA method up wishing they'd have copyrighted it !

Polemaster / PHD2 / Sharpcap / Ekos ... everyones at it.

Theres some really good software and tools available for us to use. Developed by enthusiasts and members of the astro community either for free or really cheap. Sharpcap, APT, Kstars though I'm not familiar with it, Stellarium, CdC etc. None of it is there for someone to make a quick profit but to help and encourage others. That's what makes this such a great hobby. Besides, we all have no money left after paying for scopes, eyepieces, cameras 😁

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  • 5 months later...

I too was interested in this. Software for Polemaster, IPolar and SharpCap need to see Pole Star if I am not mistaken. But for a good plate solver I guess any part of the sky would suffice for PA. If software solves images from east and west view, a non-viewable NCP would be easy to calculate. 

Christer, Sweden

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