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Old 22-10-2011, 12:45 PM
Barrykgerdes
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Barrykgerdes is offline
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Beaumont Hills NSW
Posts: 2,900
If you are going to use any sort of an equatorial mount you will need to polar align it. However I think the new 80 series mounts have the option of running them in alt/azm mode which will be great for visual work because a two star alignment will be quick and easy. This is not suitable for photography however.

Using the polar scope on an EQ6 is not as simple as it sounds. Locating Sigma Octans is not easy without practice. It is much dimmer than Polaris used in the northern hemisphere. A web cam can be adapted to give an image of what is seen by the polarscope and shown on a PC. however however most web cams are not sensitive enough for real time. This can be overcome by using PHD to control the web cam and give longer exposures. A problem with the EQ series is the red light illumination of the polar scope. It needs to be turned off. How to do this depends on the version of the drive.

I have a design for adapting a Web Cam to a HEQ5 Pro but although it is made I have not had a chance to test it out yet.

Barry
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