Polar alignment (HEQ5)

[CaptainShiznit]

49 minutes ago, Owmuchonomy said:

It surprises me how many don’t know or ignore it. It works very well, so well that I needed little adjustment using PhD2 tools to refine it for imaging.

Is this the setting on the handset that tells you to pick a star, tries to point at it then you correct it, then repeat a couple times? I thought this was a fine tuning routine and not an alternative to the polar scope stuff. Can you just point your mount North and do this?

[spillage]

If you have a android phone try SynscanInit 2 to help with the position of polaris within the clock. When I used to manually set up I would set up the mount and just by eye make sure it looked levelish and pointing towards polaris. Check the image on the app and then just align it. Attach my scope and if using the handset run a 3 star alignment. Using a pc directly is much easier with platesolve.

[Owmuchonomy]

3 hours ago, CaptainShiznit said:

Is this the setting on the handset that tells you to pick a star, tries to point at it then you correct it, then repeat a couple times? I thought this was a fine tuning routine and not an alternative to the polar scope stuff. Can you just point your mount North and do this?

Yep.  Level your mount. Roughly align your mount axis to the pole.  Do a 2 star GoTo alignment (not 3) then follow the routine on the handset.  Using an increasingly powerful EP will help with accuracy.  Folks who can't see Polaris can use it too.