Drift alignment

[33South (Chris)]

I came across this courtesy one of the Yahoo groups and wondered if any of you expert drifters had any comments.

http://www.skyinsight.com/wiki/index...D_Drift_Method

[Striker (Tony)]

That would work....but I find it far easier and less time consuming just using the toucam with K3CCD

Out in the field without a computer using a Illuminated reticle is doing the same job.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

That looks interesting. I'll give it a go but as Tony has said, if you have K3 then I think it would be much quicker. I can definately see the benefit though if you don't have something like K3 and normally do it by eye with a reticle.

[RB (Andrew)]

Originally Posted by Striker

That would work....but I find it far easier and less time consuming just using the toucam with K3CCD

Tony, could you give us a quick rundown on what settings to use in K3CCD for polar alignment?
Do you need a mod toucam for long exp?

[Striker (Tony)]

No Andrew to the mod toucam, all you need is any cam that you can see and focus on....any webcam will pick up bright stars.

All I do is single out a star fairly close to the meridian...does not have to be that close.

1)focus on the star with standard toucam...the higher the magnification the better...I use this on my C11 with a focal length of 2800...I think the toucam is approx equilivent to a 6mm eyepiece giving me about 460x magnification.

2)woops I made a mistake...the last few times I have used Guidedog for drift alignment not K3CCD....anyway....in guidedog you can put a cross hair on the star..I do this but then I also turn the toucam so that I get an approx tracking line on the chross hair buy simply driving the RA axis back and forth...meaning when I drive the RA axis this will follow one of the lines of the chrosshairs.

3) center target and allow to sit for atleast a few minutes...the higher the mag the less time you need to wait...once the star has drifted of it's axis then I just adjust the RA or Dec axis back to the cross hair.

4) I only do 1 axis at a time..dont try doing both at the same time or you will get confused.
Once you see someone do this once you will Know exactly what to do.

[RB (Andrew)]

Thanks Champ.