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Level, polar align, Home position
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By Astrofriend
Hi,
I was asked on a Swedish forum to put an "Astronomical Dictionary" on my homepage. I have made a test page in an easy form. Astronomical related words linked to wikipedia.
It aims to the beginners in astronomy so it should not be too complicated words.
http://astrofriend.eu/astronomy/astronomical-dictionary/astronomical-dictionary.html
Let me know if it's useful and and I shall add more words.
/Lars
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By Waldemar
I often read that leveling your mount is nonsense or a ‘myth’…
Although it is not absolutely necessary to level a GEM to achieve good polar alignment, leveling is a very easy and handy way to make the first step into polar alignment, for the simple reason there is a relation between level and latitude. Latitude is always measured as a deviation from level, so why not start with level in the first place? When leveled you can use the marks on the mounts latitude adjustment scale to get a rough alignment together with azimuth adjustment. Yes, without leveling you can get polar alignment as well, but it is a lot harder, because there is nothing to start with…
Especially when you cannot see Polaris at your favorite site, it is a good idea, to go to a site where you can see Polaris and prepare your mount for ‘blind’ pa, by leveling it as precise as you can, do a polar alignment as good as you can and leave the settings as they are for your next session at the ‘blind’ place. On that place point your mount roughly North with the tripod or azimuth adjuster and level again as precise as you can . Then slew to a star that you can see (preferably South) about the same latitude as Polaris. You will need to adjust azimuth to get it centered, and maybe a little tweak with latitude (because of ‘flaws’ in your bubble level), but it should be very close if you did a precise leveling... Simple one star polar alignment on a place where you cannot see Polaris!
For imaging this alignment procedure together with the use of PHD will be (reasonably) ok as well.
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By t0ny
Unlike many I was fortunate enough to get an hour or so of crystal clear skies last night.
Up until now I have always roughly plonked my EQ3-2 due North and had fun with some observing. Last night however was my opportunity to try my new HEQ5 (birthday present) and I thought I would set-up properly for the first time.
Having been given some great advice on Polar alignment in another topic (I started) I was quite confident this would not be too tricky for me, I was very wrong.
I spent the first 20 mins looking at the counterweight rod, and again nothing as the dec axis was not rotated to look through. I was just too excited and forgot everything I had read through these cloudy evenings about setting up.
Anyway I could finally see stars after about 30mins but too many to pick Polaris. I think I was in the general direction but I could not make out which one was him. Should Polaris be really obvious to me, like way brighter?
Also it seemed that I had to tip the altitude back almost as high as it could point, does this seem right? I was basically sitting on the cold wet floor squinting up through the polarscope at maybe 10/15 stars with no clue what was what.
Deflated I resorted to manually moving the scope for 5 mins before the clouds rolled in, the night a failure.
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