Quote:
Originally Posted by okiscopey
If it's difficult to find a bright enough star from his Sydney suburb, perhaps Mark could use Saturn for ALT aligning. It's very near the celestial equator at the moment, and its own motion should be negligible for the purpose.
According to my SNPro, Saturn is 30 deg. above the eastern horizon tonight (Tuesday) at 23:30 (daylight saving time) and at 30 deg. in the west tomorrow morning at 05:30 am. It might even be visible through the trees!
Will this work?
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Not reeeally a good idea if you want to really get it spot on.
Saturn, even with an inclination of 2 or 3 degrees to the ecliptic
will still exhibit some drift in DEC over the course of a few hours.
I just did a check in CDC and it will drift at least 30 arc seconds in
Dec as well as drift in RA over a few hours tonight.
That might not seem much, and probably would be ok for rough
polar alignment....but I wouldn't do it.
This would be considerably less if we were'nt coming up to
opposition.
There should be plenty of stars available, and if you add a webcam
to the OTA or spotscope you should get heaps more with the brightness
and gain tweaked.
FWIW.
Steve