Vixen Polarie polar scope

[Omaroo]

This arrived from My Astro Shop today - the Polarie polar scope. It's very nicely built, with smooth dial controls and crystal clear optics. The quality of finish is superb, with nicely machined surfaces, knurling and anodising.

I'll give it a rip tonight and see if I can quickly and accurately find alignment. I must confess that I've never really used a polar scope before - relying on compass and inclinometer and then drift aligning my imaging rig. I hope that by using an accurately set compass and inclinometer, I can at least find the darned Octans asterism in the field of view.

I'll let you know :)

[multiweb]

I found the SCP extremely hard to find. This chart from a mate of mine with brighter stars that you can actually see and home in the sweet spot might help. Take the annotations and arrows out and you'll be hard pressed to find octans.

[Omaroo]

Thanks Marc, I'll try this as well. Octans is a bugger, that's for sure. I'm hoping that once I set the dials properly - with the current time and date as well as the standard meridian offset for me, which is 0.8 deg E, and used the compass and inclinometer plus levelled the mount... phew... that I might actually be able to see it close to the engravings. I saw it down at our forest site the other day through a GSO polar scope no problems. No exactly bright, but not impossible either.

[multiweb]

There is also the little peep hole on the side which should help seeing a wider field.

[gregbradley]

I was under the impression from Houghy you line up the brighter stars like Achemar first using the marks on the polar scope and then go for octans. It was a 2 step approach.

I have one of these coming and I have had a polar scope but never was able to master it. I am hoping this one is easier. Octans is very hard to see even at a dark site (like mine).

Those annotations should help. You definitely need a road map and the inclinometer and compass should get you a pretty close starting point.

Greg.

[multiweb]

I had a look in my G11 Polar scope tonight and I could see the alignment stars in the reticule because I was already close enough but TBH I doubt I would have found them from scratch. Maybe a polar scope is to get you spot on when you're already close enough and not the other way around?

[Omaroo]

My plan. Precisely. That's exactly what I said originally. Get there otherwise, and then fine-tune with it.

[JB80]

Did you at least get the PS instruction booklet in English?
Mine was in Japanese but it did go through it all in the actual Polarie booklet.

[multiweb]

Might be challenging. How wide is the FOV of the Polarie's scope. Do they have only a pattern of Octans or much wider with a couple of reference stars?

[Omaroo]

No other stars, but an eight degree FOV.

Jarrod - mine was in English. That, the service, and warranty, are the reasons I went to MAS and bought local.

[Omaroo]

Yeah, easy-peasy. Compass and inclinometer brought it easily into view even in my suburban sky. The rotation was wrong, so I have to figure that out, but the asterism was plainly visible in the field. :thumbsup:

[h0ughy]

exactly - it finishes the job nicely.;)