[[1ponders] (Paul)]

I was asked up at Duckadang if K3CCDTools really helped with drift aligning, and I proceeded to wax lyrical about the benefits of using software, not just K3 to help you drift align.


So to give those here who don't use software to help I've included here a screen dump of the K3 drift explorer for tonight. To read it all you need to do is look at the pink line on the graph. That is the motion of the Dec drift. The blue is RA movement. The wiggles are effects of seeing. So what is the graph telling us. Well in the top right hand corner you can see the number 1257, this is how many seconds the drift reading has been running for. ie 20min. The numbers at the side of the graph are the number of pixels the center of the star has moved, with zero at the center. The setup I am using has a resolution of 0.58 "/pixel . So in twenty minutes my Dec drift (error in altitude ) has only been between 0.58 and 1.16 " And how long did this take me to get this accurate. Well apart from the 20min to take this reading, I spent 15 min adjusting it from setting it down tonight. True it takes a bit of practice, but boy if you want an accurate drift align, then I don't think you will get much better in such a short period of time.

As another example, at Lostock this year Gary Kopff and I measure my Alt and AZ error using the new TPAS function of Argo Navis. My AZ error was less than the error of the AN and my Alt was only 5" out and the AN had an error of +/- 2.5",

It really does makes that much of a difference.