Gday Chris
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When I previously used the word "aligned", I meant that situation when the scope's software and real sky were in alignment - i.e. the scope knew where it was in three dimensions (four if you include time) after a two-star alignment such that GOTO's work to within a standard 25mm EP's FOV.
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After doing this manual procedure, the scope should stay fully aligned as per above,
ie normal gotos should still work, just the accuracy may drop off a little.
Ref caveat at bottom though.
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Being in polar mode, it should be taken that the fork axis was already pointing directly at the SCP -
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Ahh but its not normally, its nearly always off by a bit.
With the Meades, when you do a twostar in polar, it factors this true error into its later calcs, but that doesnt affect tracking once on a target,
Only goto accuracy.
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Given this, a manual slew to an object, followed by a clutch re-lock should allow object tracking in RA irrespective of whether or not the scope was re-synced or not on that new object - no?
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Correct. Tracking is just the RA motor running at sidereal.
( Plus tracking rate and PEC if selected )
Ie No different to a basic RA clock drive
However, just starting your scope unaligned in polar starts the drive,
so if you want a really quick and quiet ) full manual operation, just turn on the scope and use the clutches, dont even bother to align or do synchs.
It wont know (or care) where it is, but it will track.
One caveat for anyone else thinking of doing this.
The Meade uses an encoder count from home to ensure it doesnt crash into the hardstops. Doing this procedure for all sky slewing will almost certainly make it lose the plot ( even if you do synchs ).
Thus, if you do use this method, DONT use normal goto slews again without properly realigning first, as you "may" end up crashing into a hardstop at full speed.
Andrew