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Old 19-11-2019, 10:02 AM
rzgp33 (Brian)
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Adventures with PoleMaster

...So it was a good night to stargaze or so my app "Good To Stargaze" told me. I have just received a QHYCCD Polemaster from Optics Central after 4 freaking weeks on back order !!!! The AVX adapter is *still* on back order. I have so far totally failed to polar align here in OZ... I've just been star hopping, apart from a lucky few times when the rough placement is good. I just can't see Octans, so I have high hopes for PM.

I get to feel like a DIY King by finding the right washers and bolts to mount PM via the universal adapter directly to the mount without drilling, glueing or breaking anything.

Once it gets darkish I set the mount up southish, east 10% for SCP and set the latitude dohiky to 36 (Bendigo,Vic).

I then connect PM to my old HP laptop and fire up the software that I DL from QHYCCD. I connect to the PM and get a nice unfamiliar star field. I should say that most star fields are unfamiliar to me, I'm not a real noob, but I don't really know the sky well.

I then spend the next 45mins adjusting the alt/azimuth knobs looking for Octans.... nada... nada... The sky is strangely static. I tried to save a bmp, to plate solve, but the software would not do so. It gave me zero length files. I "reset to a known state".. double checked everything, and you guessed it, the cap was on and I was looking at hot pixels the whole time... There were still very few stars, but now I could see a flicker when I moved my hand over the lens.

That didn't explain the lack of bmp saving so i did the usual Winblows thing and rebooted... queue 30mins of waiting on updates... After the glaciers melted... i.e Winblows rebooted, no change, zero length files, or nothing at all.

I got tired of Winblows and noting that there was a version of the PM software for Linux and a MacOS "informal" version, started first with Ubuntu. Both 19 and 18LTS gave me "Segmentation fault core dumped" and so I moved to MacOS.

The MacOS version worked. I could save files and my hopes began to recover. Its 2am now, and I am looking to find a picture of the night sky to upload to astrometry.net. The image is still just hot pixels with the occasional flicker while I adjust the knobs. In one of the flickers I note that the image has resolved my thumb. 2cms away.

So I need to focus it.

Nowhere in the manual or anywhere else did I find any mention of focusing the PM. I assumed it was fixed on infinity.

There is no focus ring that I can see. I see in the manual a reference to an allen key "for lens focus adjustment" but where do I !@#$ing put it. I finally find that the outside shroud unscrews, and you get access to the actual lens with the focus ring.

I finally can see stars ... but I can't recognise Octans

I save a picture to plate solve and the software on the Mac throws up a spinning rainbow telling mne that it is working. Thats better than Winblows. It keeps spinning, and keeps spinning... 15mins later its still spinning and I give up and try to stop the software... to no avail. Its hung. I power off and try again and this time the software hangs when it starts.

Its 3am now and I'm over it all... time for me to "reset to a known state". I'll try again some other night.

I carefully pack everything up. The mini-USB cable that connects to the PM is a gnarly heavy duty version that has thumb screws to keep it safely inserted, and to support the flexing of cables, those mini-usb sockets quite often wear and fail. Since I'll be using it again soon, I wrap the cable around the tripod legs and carry it all inside. The mount has a camera and lens attached that I was foolishly hoping to try tonight. As I turn to get the rest of the gear the heavy duty cable flex's back off the tripod and wraps around my leg.

I feel it, but loose balance and stumble. The cable grabs my leg well, and the momentum rips the cable out of the PM, toppling the mount/camera/lens towards the tile floor, I'm able to desperately catch the gear before it hits the tiles but the cable is toast , the connection is just bare wires and I'm afraid that the nights adventure in PM will be the only one that this PM has.

Fortunately the Minu-usb socket has survived, if a little bruised, and the PM works with another mini-usb cable.

So thats my PM adventure for last night.

This morning I found a new Winblows version to try on the QHYCCD support forums. Its ugly but works and doesn't hang. Of course QHYCCD says its unsupported.

Perhaps I'll just try a guide scope and Sharpcap.

time for a nap.

--
Brian O'Connor
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Old 19-11-2019, 10:13 AM
Imme (Jon)
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Sounds so familiar to me...........then I discovered Sharpcap polar alignment tool.......changed my world.
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Old 19-11-2019, 11:25 AM
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Nikolas (Nik)
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takes me 5 minutes to polar align with polemaster


have you seen this video? it helps a shedload.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_LgUFZLqIM
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Old 19-11-2019, 11:43 AM
rzgp33 (Brian)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nikolas View Post
takes me 5 minutes to polar align with polemaster


have you seen this video? it helps a shedload.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_LgUFZLqIM

yep....


That is what I was using ... no mention of the broken software nor that you have to remove the shroud and focus it. That is the sort of nooby info I need


Brian
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Old 19-11-2019, 05:16 PM
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Astronut07 (Ben)
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Pole master

Hi Brian

Sorry to hear about your issues with polemaster

Several months ago I was going to buy a polemaster but after some research I decided to make my own using a spare guidecamera, security camera lens (25mm) & bits & pieces I had lying around

I use sharpcap to polar align & only takes me several minutes to get accurate polar alignment

Attached are images of rig I made

Cheers
Ben
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Old 19-11-2019, 05:50 PM
AnakChan (Sean)
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Brian,

W.R.T. Octans, have you polar aligned before with other mounts, polar scopes, etc? I grew up with Vixen’s polarscopes & learnt to recognise the Octans quadrant pretty easily even with different widefield eyepieces, which then makes recognizing Octans via the Polemaster rather easily.

I would recommend practicing recognizing star patterns via eyepieces (with & without diagonals) just to familiarize a little more on inverted & flipped views, & star hop using star maps.

Another recommendation is to have the Polar Scope Align app installed on your phone. You can select different views of how Octans should look through the polar scope depending on the mount you have. There’s also a PoleMaster option there.
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Old 20-11-2019, 08:54 AM
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Bart
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Why don't you try the solar noon method to mark the true north/south line somewhere on the ground so you can chuck your tripod over that , then you will be close-ish and Sharpcap or Polemaster will work way better.

Plenty of methods out there, you made need to reverse some directions as they may be written for that other hemisphere that is up there somewhere.
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Old 23-11-2019, 08:17 AM
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Swagman105 (Geoff)
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Help using the polemaster

I have lousy eyesight and a light polluted viewing area. A polar scope was totally useless for me. I invested in a polemaster and even though the images looked good revealing stars on the computer screen that I would have had no chance of seeing properly through a polarscope, my first few tries were unsuccessful as I could not recognise Octans. I wasn't even sure that I was looking at the correct patch of sky.
I was using a compass to roughly orientate the telescope and I decided I needed to more correctly identify true south.
True south is the direction a shadow of a vertical stick will make on the ground at noon. But not just ordinary noon by the clock, there is also a true noon which takes into account difference between your exact location and the meridian on which your time zone is based and also the fluctuations caused by variations in the earths orbit around the sun.
I was able to find a website www.solar-noon.com that allows you to determine exact true noon for your location taking into account these differences.
Over a number of days I drew the line of the shadow of a vertical rod at true noon. They all lined up pretty well and satisfied with that I scribed that with a sharp tool into the concrete of my driveway where I do my observing.
After that with my first go with the polemaster I was successful in finding Octans. It wasn't all that obvious at first because of orientation issues but after a few more practices, finding the asterisms became easy.
All I have to do now is set up the front leg of the tripod exactly on the scribe line and square up the back legs across the line with the mount in the home position and octans is always there and an easy meat for the Polemaster.
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Old 23-11-2019, 08:48 AM
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Swagman105 (Geoff)
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Ps

Just to add to my last Brian, I now see you are using Lat 36 degrees for Bendigo whereas Google earth shows all of Bendigo in the 37s. This also might make a small difference.
Having your true south and exact latitude identified prior to set is almost essential.
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Old 23-11-2019, 09:51 AM
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Andy01 (Andy)
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Just chiming in regarding mac functionality with the PM.

For some bizarre reason, it works perfectly - but only once, then if you try it again it hangs when you reach the step where the small rotating circle is supposed to appear.

I found that if I then dump the app & re-download it fresh & reinstall it works again - but only once....

But it's much faster and more accurate than drift aligning
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Old 23-11-2019, 04:28 PM
rzgp33 (Brian)
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Just to update.... The next cloud free night I went out with the new updated totally unsupported software. Set the mount up pointing celestial south and set up the latitude (only 3% accuracy so i left it at 36). Took a picture, plate solved and I was very close. I still could not really do the pattern recognition in my head, but plate solving save the day... took me 15mins tops....


Brian
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Old 23-11-2019, 04:45 PM
rzgp33 (Brian)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Swagman105 View Post
Just to add to my last Brian, I now see you are using Lat 36 degrees for Bendigo whereas Google earth shows all of Bendigo in the 37s. This also might make a small difference.
Having your true south and exact latitude identified prior to set is almost essential.

my lat/long app sasy 36,46',30" but my mount only has a rough adjustment in 3degree increments so I picked 36.
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Old 23-11-2019, 04:53 PM
rzgp33 (Brian)
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BTW I found here


https://www.myastroshop.com.au/guide...lign-basic.pdf



I found that the pole deviation GA tool had shifted on the site(deviated?)and some searching found





http://www.ga.gov.au/oracle/geomag/agrfform.jsp


And found my magnetic pole deviation to be


D = 10.663 deg



So thats why I offset 10 deg east from compass south.


Worked a treat!
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Old 23-11-2019, 05:56 PM
AnakChan (Sean)
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Again I highly recommend trying to recognise the Octans pattern even with a pair of bino’s. And get the Polar Align app :-

https://apps.apple.com/au/app/polar-...gn/id970157965

I have no affiliation to the authors but found it extremely useful when I first upgraded my mount a few years back.

Then polar alignment with the Polemaster is a breeze.
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Old 24-11-2019, 06:22 AM
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Swagman105 (Geoff)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Swagman105 View Post
Just to add to my last Brian, I now see you are using Lat 36 degrees for Bendigo whereas Google earth shows all of Bendigo in the 37s. This also might make a small difference.
Having your true south and exact latitude identified prior to set is almost essential.
Hi Brian
my apologies. Just rechecked Google earth and you are right about being in the 36s at Bendigo not 37s as I suggested.
Have attached a pic of how I set up my tripod. Two straight edges - the long bit of wood lines up down along the true north south line I have permanently scribed into the concrete I identified using the true noon transit method. Another straight edge between the two back legs is squared to 90 degrees across the north south line using a carpenters square to confirm.
Provided I don't mess with the altitude adjustments between set ups (as I found out last night - I had been replacing some knobs on the mount) Octans is there every time using .75 zoom. Just a matter of recognising it upside down or sideways some times but there are some smaller asterisms in the vicinity you also get to recognise as well to help guide your eye to Octans.
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Old 24-11-2019, 09:13 PM
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Yep I agree. Octans is hard to spot, particularly with light pollution. Any app which shows the current orientation is good.

There are many star patterns in the area which look very similar.
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