Drift Alignment

[martin_h]

Drift Alignment made easy.

Last night I decided to align my mount properly, If you use EQmod/Ascom equipment then I would recomend EQAlign - EQAlign Project

I now have virtualy zero drift in any direction and it was so easy to do.

After the inital setup - ie lon/lat co-ords date, time etc you are set to go. The first thing you have to do is to measure the roll angle of the camera you are using...This is easly done in the program by getting a star on the screen and clicking on it then set it going, if you are using EQmod it will then turn off the tracking and let the star drift it will then measure the angle of the camera to the angle of drift and adjust the screen to suit, all subsiquent measurements will subtract this angle - so there is no need to orient your camera east/west. This action only takes a few moments.

Now on to drift align.. The program is equiped with a planitarium so all you do is chose east/west or south and you are presented with a screen showing the best placed stars for your choice, click on one and hit GOTO....celect and center the star and hit GO...now its best to leave it running for at least 10 mins(unless you are way out) I was using 15 then 20 mins for my test.

Now for the best bit...when you have enough data hit compute and you are presented with 2 circles, use the direction keys to put the star in the red circle then move the mount to move the star to the green circle....simples!

Repeat this process for the other direction then repeat 2/3 times and job done!

I've included a few pics to show various bits of the process.

Pic 1 - view east

Pic 2 - view south

Pic 3 - amount of drift

Pic 4 - star aligned ready for mount movement.

[Sam]

Thanks for posting this, I have looked at EQAlign a couple of times but I think I will revisit based on this.

[martin_h]

Oh and I forgot to say - its free!!

[Earl]

My favourite 4 letter word !