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Old 16-01-2009, 10:51 AM
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JohnG (John)
Looking Down From Above

JohnG is offline
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Cootamundra, NSW
Posts: 1,711
Sounds like you are a fair way off alignment.......

First off, ditch the camera, use an illuminated X-Hair eyepiece for your initial alignment....

During daylight, identify, with your mount setup, True South using a compass, align the mount roughly on that bearing, adjust your altitude using an inclinometer or make up a latitude gauge (do a search on IIS, there are a number of articles), set the mount at your latitude.

Forget about East/West/North/South directions in the eyepiece, you only want up/down and left/right. Pick a star either in the East or West about 20 or so degrees up and near the Celestial Equator, Alpha Can Minor is good at the moment, just identify the left right movement, turn your tracking off and align the X-Hair to this movement, turn back on your tracking and recenter the star, watch the star, any movement, up or down, will become apparent almost immediately, if it moves down, aggressively move the mount in altitude, re-center, if the star moves up, you know then that the mount has been moved to much, just go back halfway, if the star then moves slowly up or down, your close, adjust accordingly.

The same with azimuth, pick a star overhead and close to the Celestial Equator, once again, just watch the star going up or down and move the mount accordingly.

Intial close alignment with the Pole is done with aggressive movements, you want the star to move in both up and down directions, don't worry about left/right, that is just PE and tracking errors.

When you have the star staying in the center with just a small amout of drift, either up or down, then use a camera if you wish, you should be able to get around 15 minutes or so with the star in the center of the X-Hairs, with an appropriate mount that is.

The trick is, be aggressive with your first couple of moves.

Hope that helps....

Cheers
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