DIYman
26-11-2013, 05:50 PM
Hello all
Would any members know of an Excel spreadsheet or piece of Java that shows how much a mount is polar misaligned when you plug in the measurements obtained during a drift alignment (http://www.astronomyforum.net/wiki/Drift-Alignment) session - ie. the amount of North/South drift of the guide star, its declination and the overall tracking time?
The best I found to date was Frank Barrett's program on his Celestialwonders webpage. However, for some reason Frank measures the drift in East/West direction rather than North/South as is standard using the drift method. I tried to email him about this but the email link on his site is broken and the site appears inactive (not sure what's going on there).
I really do not want to down load a software (http://www.astronomyforum.net/wiki/Software) program (PHD etc) and then spend valuable time trying to get it to work. I have a good eyepiece (http://www.astronomyforum.net/wiki/Eyepiece) with a reticle, a stop watch and am able to identify suitable stars on the celestial equator. (It's times like this I really envy people who have the maths to do their own trig calculations.)
Regards
Doug
Would any members know of an Excel spreadsheet or piece of Java that shows how much a mount is polar misaligned when you plug in the measurements obtained during a drift alignment (http://www.astronomyforum.net/wiki/Drift-Alignment) session - ie. the amount of North/South drift of the guide star, its declination and the overall tracking time?
The best I found to date was Frank Barrett's program on his Celestialwonders webpage. However, for some reason Frank measures the drift in East/West direction rather than North/South as is standard using the drift method. I tried to email him about this but the email link on his site is broken and the site appears inactive (not sure what's going on there).
I really do not want to down load a software (http://www.astronomyforum.net/wiki/Software) program (PHD etc) and then spend valuable time trying to get it to work. I have a good eyepiece (http://www.astronomyforum.net/wiki/Eyepiece) with a reticle, a stop watch and am able to identify suitable stars on the celestial equator. (It's times like this I really envy people who have the maths to do their own trig calculations.)
Regards
Doug