Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Ward
Just to be crystal clear on this old chestnut: a tripod can sitting at almost any angle (well... apart from upside down)
and it makes absolutely NO difference to its tracking, provided the mount is accurately polar aligned.
The only advantage of levelling is you remove "cross talk" from azimuth and altitude adjustments. A non-level mount/tripod will induce a shift in both
altitude and azimuth, even though you may only have adjusted one or the other.
With a few iterations it is easy enough regardless of a level tripod or pier, to zero in on the pole.
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^ this
I try and be level, but eyeball level only. If you're polar aligning, plate solving and autoguiding, well it doesn't matter.