Drift Alignment, when did it 'click' for you?

[Poita]

I've been helping some people locally do a drift alignment, and from their feedback it seems they have read countless guides, and looking at threads here and on Cloudy Nights and other sites, there are countless posts from frustrated newbies and not-so-newbies when drift aligning is attempted.

I'm wanting to put together a truly definitive guide, and some of the things I've noticed that are missing are:

1) When pointing at the star in the 'South' or North or East or West, what does the mount 'look like'. Many of my people were choosing totally the wrong star to work with, so I'm intending to put photos in of a typical mount position, and particularly good stars to choose from various locations at various times of year

2) The direction adjustment. Though this is well described, this seems to always do their heads in.

3) The amount of adjustment

4) Some reality checks to see if you are doing it right.

5) I'd like to add drift alignment during the day with a solar filter for people that would like to get 'close' before nightfall.

What I'm after is some anecdotes from people as to when it finally 'clicked' for you. What was the Eureka moment when it suddenly made sense? What was the piece of 'missing' information that finally fell into place for you?

Drift alignment is actually really easy once you know how, I'd like to try and address it so that it is easy for people first time out, and I think collecting the common mistakes and having multiple explanations will help.

So please, post your story of when it suddenly made sense for you.

[Octane]

It took a little while. I was a real stickler for alignment. It was a running joke up at the paintball place and then the pony club up at Kulnura/Mangrove Mountain where I would still be drift aligning and people would be packing up to go home. :) The ensuing results made the time and effort all worthwhile.

I came up with the following:

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showpost.php?p=692556&postcount=6

It has helped a few people. :)

H

[Omaroo]

I never got what all the fuss is about. All I do is wait for a Southerly Buster to spring up, hold out a loose bit of string or ribbon, and point the pointy bit the way the string indicates. Works every time. :hi: Only problem is that Southerly Busters don't come by every day, hence my pitiful number of imaging hours this year. Sou' westers don't work to well I've found - it really HAS to be a southerly breeze. The stronger the wind, the more pronounced the drift.

[Poita]

Thanks H, that is the sort of thing I was looking for.

[Deeno]

Nice one H, thats a really good guide!

I find timing the star drift over a period of five minutes gives a good 'feel' of how much adjustment needs to be made each time.

The first time I attempted drift aligning I was doing something fundamentally wrong and eventually saw the sun rise........

[Poita]

What was it that you were doing wrong?

I remember an night a few years back that I started setting up at about 10:30pm and wondered what was happening to the sky when I was ready to image, it took me a few minutes to realise it was the sun rising. :O

[Deeno]

Think it was something like watching and adjusting drift along the wrong axis.......

[Octane]

Hey guys,

Glad that the 15 steps may be of assistance!

I use the reticle in StarTarg to track movement. I line up one edge of the reticle through the centre of the star and count the number of seconds it takes the star to cross through the opposite reticle. Say, it takes 30 seconds to cross (bad drift!), I'll make two complete turns of the azimuth adjustment knob on the G-11. If it now takes a minute to cross, I know I'm moving in the right direction. I aim to keep doing this process until the star doesn't drift for ten minutes at a time.

Then start sorting out altitude adjustments. Once you do this a few times, it becomes second nature and you won't forget the steps.

I haven't imaged since October last year but I am confident that if I went out tonight, I would be able to still drift align. :)

H

[stardust steve]

Still waiting for the click.....like a safe cracker with their ear to the safe awaiting that click so they can open a door to the endless wonders that lay beyond:D
Just a matter of correct combinations:rofl:

[allan gould]

one of the quickest ways to get a good North - South alignment prior to drift aligning is to use a planetarium program that has your co-ordinates and time well set. Then look due north and look for a visible star that is transiting at that time or really nearly so. Adjust your azimuth so that at the time that your star is transiting you have it dead centered in an eyepiece. If you have adjusted your latitude well enough at that transit time you should have the star well centered and be very well polar aligned.

[Octane]

That's great advice, Allan!

H

[Ausrock]

Peter,

One thing I've regularly encountered when reading equipment manuals is that the "authors" invariably seem to assume the reader has prior knowledge, ie: manuals/guides are rarely, if ever, written with a complete newcomer in mind.

If you are brave enough to proceed, please consider that not everyone has a completely clear 360 deg view of the night sky, I for example have nothing visible to the north, a line of trees from east to west and hanging overhead limits my view.

As a parallel, it's crossed my mind to document the "ins and outs" of hanging a DSLR off the back of an SCT as I've yet to find a suitable beginners "guide" online.

:thumbsup:

[TrevorW]

It never did that is why I use Alignmaster

Cheers

[Poita]

That is exactly what I am attempting to do, I find every guide out there seems to be missing one or two bits of crucial information for the beginner.

I only get a south and west view myself, so I will be definitely taking that into account.

For the DLSR, easiest thing to do is to get a DSLR to 2" T-ring adapter then a t-ring to 2" nosepiece adapter and jam it in the back of pretty much anything, including a SCT crayford, which I think is a must for DSLR use.

e.g. for Nikon
http://www.bintel.com.au/Astrophotography/Adapters/Nikon-T-Ring/1227/productview.aspx
Nosepiece adapter
http://www.bintel.com.au/Astrophotography/Adapters/Bintel-Camera-Adapter-2-/35/productview.aspx

Optional crayford.
http://www.bintel.com.au/Accessories/Focusers/Bintel-2--SCT-Crayford-Focuser-10-1/502/productview.aspx

[tlgerdes]

Realising that the graphs in PHD indicate star movement in realtime in pixels and that the slope of the line drawn on the graph is directly proportional to how far out of alignment you are ;)

[2stroke]

I guess what had me the first few times was its polar south not magnetic lmfao. Another thing is using a camera in live view mode make sure you don't rotate the thing and keep it as if taking a picture when going from the south to west. What really helps is a picture of the sky with the travel of stars around the pole to understand what happening :)


BTW. The best guide would be a video guide uploaded to youtube, its much simpler for people to understand and grasp, rather then a text and image based guide. You could also include a few different mounts this way also, on top of that add in images ect to the video with editing software.

[Ausrock]

Except for the fact that not everyone is a "youtuber", (please don't ask or argue, just accept it as fact), and it's assumptions of this nature that Pete's hoping to avoid

[DavidTrap]

I use PoleAlignMax. If you don't have access to MaximDL, then use PHD and disable guide output - firm believer it can pick up drift far quicker than the eye.

I decided that having to use a portable setup meant I would always need to do polar alignment - therefore anything that would speed up the process was worth spending time to get working.

I now have a permanent pier at my dark sky site (thanks Mark) - and last time I went out there and plonked down the mount, it was within 30 arc sec of the pole. After three runs of PoleAlignMax I was within 10 arc sec.

DT

[Moon]

For me it was the "looking west" and "looking up" diagrams here:
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/63-405-0-0-1-0.html
plus the fantastic suggesion by Al here (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=43250) to forget north/south/east/west and just use up/down/left/right as viewed in the eyepiece.

I've recently switched from drift alignment to using Alignmaster. For imaging it's easier, faster and more accurate.
At the ASV dark site we have piers all set up in such a way that I find my polar alignment is almost perfect when I start. So these days it's a non issue....

James