Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Haese
OK I have SkyX, camera, dome and scope co-operating and plate solving. Doing PA, on my third Run and Ernie you are right it does work. It is very elegant compared to Sky6 with Tpoint mapper. All that was the problem was the sync, did that on Canopus and away it went. Very close to the pole now and just trying to get it to no more adjustments.
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Hi Paul,
When you get "close" it gets tougher to see the improvement because you are making such tiny mechanical adjustments. You might want to photographically measure your movements. To do altitude you can just slew the scope the required # of arcsec away (in the opposite direction), then physically adjust mount until the star is re-centered. I just use a star on the meridian.
Azi is a bit more complicated: (from Patrick Wallace)
"Pick a star on the meridian and as low in the sky as possible. The azimuth adjustment will move the star on the camera in the east-west direction by an angle equal to the adjustment. Note that:
If you have to use a star higher in the sky, the movement on the camera will be smaller by the factor cos(altitude).
If you're not on the meridian the star won't move east-west, but the distance on the camera will be the same."
Thus: if your measurement star is at 40 degrees (altitude) and you need to move azimuth by 1 arcmin: cos(40) x 1 arcmin = .766 arcmin.
I find these methods work so well that I can adjust the mount in a non-iterative process.
Peter