Quote:
Originally Posted by Startrek
I don’t use PHD2 drift alignment so can’t comment on that procedure
Don’t get confused between Polar Alignment ( Drift or other methods ) and Star Alignment , they are 2 different things
Polar alignment adjusts your mount in Altitude and Azimuth to align or centralise your mounts axis with the polar axis
Star alignment is used so your mount has a pointing model of the night sky ( via 1, 2 , 3 or more alignment stars ) and can Goto selected targets by use of a hand controller, or planetarium software
In some Polar alignment routines , Star alignments are used to plate solve or map the polar alignment Star ( eg Synscan Polar Alignment routine using hand controller. This is what I use )
Hope the above makes sense
Maybe some others can comment and explain further
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+1
So even if your pointing model allows your scope to slew to the target, without decent polar alignment, the scope will have to constantly track in both RA and continuous DEC to keep the object in the FOV, however there will also be rotation of the object (unless you employ some sort of de-rotator).
When the scope is properly PA'd, only RA movement should be necessary with very minimal DEC corrections, and negligible field rotation....