Like many suburban amatuers, the Octan asterism is near
impossible to locate quickly, let alone see in a polar-scope. I received a new EQ6 GOTO mount for my B'day in March
& spent many
frustrating nights(when clear & no moon) trying to set it up crouched on my knees, fogging up the retical,
swearing & massaging a
sore neck. But now I have a solution, other than toss it over the fence into the neighbours pool. Besides the drift method, I have a polar-scope & I will damn well use it.
With binoculars I had familiarised myself with the location of the asterism near to Sigma Octan, finding a clear position in the backyard to setup. Having a green laser & laser mount, I decided to double side tape the laser mount to the side of the EQ mount, strenghthening it with black gaffa tape. Then aligning the laser through the polar-scope to one of the asterism points in the retical. Then simply use the binoculars to locate the asterism( I have a reference above the neighbours TV antenna), crank the alt-azimuth to point the laser to the corresponding point of the asterism. Then look into the polar-scope & low&behold
the faint dots are there( inverted ) to be fine tuned into place, swithing the mount off & on to illuminate the image in the polar eyepiece & a bit of squinting to get them aligned.
Then the clouds suddenly
came over last night just when I was searching for the second alignment star for the GOTO...
