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Oooh, someone has read my article! thanks Geoff!
In my opinion the polar scope is a gimmick if you try to use it anywhere other than in a REALLY dark site, if the mount is on the red light washes out any chance of seeing Octans' stars at all and you cant dim it or turn it off when the scope is on.
As Barry has posted, you can sort of see Sigma Octanis when the scope is in the right area and the mount is powered off but your eyes need to be completely dark adapted.
For the tutorial, I used my Binoculars mounted on a bino mount on the piggyback screw that is on one of the tube rings as the binos have a nice wide field and being 11 x 70's, plenty of aperture to see what is there.
I first made sure the scope and the binoculars were coaligned so the main scope (and therefore the polar scope) were pointing in the same place as the binos. At the time I did the tutorial, I was using the EQ2 with no polar scope, but I have reproduced this method with the HEQ5 and it is spot on. Once pointed, the RA axis is manually rotated (with no OTA or counter weights on it) and left powered off, to visually inspect it lines up. Then you can fine tune the mount if necessary.
This is what I did when I first aligned the HEQ5 and was able to take unguided shots up to 1 minute before very slight drift occurred.
Now, I simply use Trevor Gerdes guide to using PHD and the guidescope to drift align in about 3-5 mins.
For visual and I am assuming from the same place in the backyard, simply try my method (as Achenar is in the right spot at the moment based on my starting point in the sky). Once done and verified, mark the tripod leg positions on the ground with paint (for concrete) or pavers for grass and then plonk the scope down there each time and you should be right.
DONT rely on the altitude scale on the mount to be ANYWHERE NEAR correct.....both my EQ2 and HEQ5 where about 10 - 15 degrees out.
Good luck.
Cheers
Chris
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