Favourite or preferred stars for Go-To alignments or calibration

[StarGazingSiouxsie]

Hello my cosmic cousins

Do you have a particular star that you like to use as part as your alignment routine or as a calibration star? (E.G for StarSense Auto Align, or All Star Polar Alignment, etc)

If you do, then pleasae share and also why you use that particular one. 

Last night, I tried using Vega as my calibration star. I was having big alignment problems anyway, but aside from that, although Vega is very bright, it's also very high lattitude and challenging for me to get a comfortable eyepiece position. 

Additionally - and for me personally this is a big issue - I am Neuro A Typical. Aside from other issues, it gives me difficulty in picking out or discerning one bright object from another, even when the objects in the eyepiece (in this instance) are of differing magnitudes. My vision is 20 / 20, it's just that I often have challenges discerning objects of similar size, shape or colour from each other. 

So what I thought might help me is if I try and use stars that are Red Giants or whom oterwise have a red / orange spectral signature, which would (hopefully) make it easier for me to identify / lock onto them with my vision.   

I am thinking of stars like Antares, Betelgeuse, Arcturus, Aldebaran, Kochab, and others. 

Obviously, the time of year and one's lattitude / longtitude are factors which will affect which of these (Northern Hemisphere) stars may be visible. 

Are any of those stars ones that you use? Any other thoughts, tips, experiences you'd like to share? 

Siouxsie 

Edited August 5, 2020 by StarGazingSiouxsie

[Cosmic Geoff]

This is not something you need to worry about too much.  You are directed to pick a named star from a list, so just pick one that sounds familiar (and preferably bright and not too near the horizon), and the software will do the rest, hopefully pointing the 'scope close to the bright star you selected.  For instance, Arcturus is bright, and currently at a convenient altitude soon after dusk.

If your scope has a finder other than the Starsense, and you have pre-aligned it with the main scope in daylight, that will make the calibration easier to do.  If you want to use Solar System Align at any time, you will need a finder other than the Starsense.

[Craney]

Hi Siouxsie,

I'm not too familiar with your present set up, all I know that it is a rather nice Celestron SCT.  The last time I used a Celestron Nextstar mount and hand controller, it had a feature  (Auto-align ??)  that did not require you to identify particular stars.  As long as you picked 3 fairly bright stars with a good degree of separation in the sky and individually line them up in the FOV, it would do  all the angular  calculations stuff  and 'know' which stars were chosen   ( some form of wide plate-solving ).   The achieved alignment was good enough for most targets.

Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree, but you might not need to worry about individual stars.

Sean.

Edited August 5, 2020 by Craney

[cletrac1922]

First of all welcome from Land Down Under

Where I am, I use Sirius and Canopus

Lot of others might say not far apart from each other, works fine for me

Know the northern hemisphere is different from the southern

Currently just after sunset have Jupiter and Saturn almost overhead, and Mars rises around 9pm

Several of my club members have posted images of the southern ice cap on Mars, as Mars orbit currently is closer to Earth

John

 

 

[wookie1965]

I use stars half way up the sky at the moment Deneb and Altair if you need the list of stars in the Skywatcher handset give me a pm I have the list somewhere you may even to download it. 

https://www.jimscosmos.com/synscanalignmentstars

[StarGazingSiouxsie]

On 05/08/2020 at 23:30, cletrac1922 said:

First of all welcome from Land Down Under

Where I am, I use Sirius and Canopus

Lot of others might say not far apart from each other, works fine for me

Know the northern hemisphere is different from the southern

Currently just after sunset have Jupiter and Saturn almost overhead, and Mars rises around 9pm

Several of my club members have posted images of the southern ice cap on Mars, as Mars orbit currently is closer to Earth

John

 

 

Thanks, John

I think it's so cool that you can look at Jupiter & Saturn almost at the your zenith (which for me would be near Lyra / Vega). Where I am, Jupiter & Saturn are just visible over the forest near me at about 22 degrees up. Also very cool that you get to see Mars at such at a reasonable hour!! I will have to wait a few more months to view Mars at that time but I am looking forward to it!! 

 

Siouxsie 

Edited August 8, 2020 by StarGazingSiouxsie