Quote:
Originally Posted by PeterEde
Question
If we're aligning to the SCP that for many is hard enough to pickout and drift aligning is a mystery still
Why can't we just centre a star. set mount to those coordinates then when setting back to centre shouldn't the SCP be there?
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That would work for alt-az mounts. where the orientation of the mount does not matter. the mount tracks in 2 axis.
with an equatorial mount only tracks about 1 axis (RA axis I believe)
so that means that axis needs to be polar aligned as the mount assumes it is
In order to track an object on a mount that is not polar aligned, the mount will need to track in 2 axis and this is what an autoguider does by sending pulses to both RA and Dec axis to correct for errors in alignment.
hope that helps...
regards John