Quote:
Originally Posted by damo_Melbourne
When you say "Polar Align" - how accurate does this need to be given your syncing in Cdc later on?
I was going to start using AlignMaster to Polar align and give that a go. Have been using WCS which is also good but time consuming.
|
G'day Damo,
Firstly, keep in mind I'm pretty new to all this too. Hence the "by an idiot" title
The Polar Alignment is to get your mount all aligned with the axis the Earth spins on so you don't get any rotation in your shots. The more accurate you get this, the less hard guiding is and you'll get cleaner stars without rotation about the guide star. In fact if you have really accurate polar alignment, and had a "perfect" mount that didn't have periodic errors and other mechanical imperfections etc, you wouldn't need to guide at all.
You may have read about "drift aligning". This is a way of achieving polar alignment. Another is to use a polar scope in your mount - difficult in Southern Hemisphere unless at dark site since we don't have Polaris and the constellation commonly used has fainter stars that get a little drowned out by light pollution, at least here where I live.
Alignmaster is another way to go and I'm loving it. Very quick and easy.
Haven't used WCS so can't comment.
Polar Alignment is different to the alignment you do in CdC. The alignment in CdC is really syncing stars in the real world - ie through your viewfinder on your scope, crosshairs, camera field of view - with the stars modelled in the planetarium software. This is so that when you click on a star in CdC and click to slew to it, it will be pointing at the right star in the real world. Make sense?