polar alignment with DSLR question

[Peter.M]

The alternative that I have is alignmaster which I find to be excelent if I can see the stars it wants to use.

For instance at the moment around 930pm I can use Acrux and Miaplacidus. Before this time Acrux is behind a house and I am unable to use alignmaster.

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

Hi Peter,

I like the idea of PHD doing all of it but I found EQAlign is great that there is no need to look at it. Just set it and 10 minute later come back and it shows where to position the scope and where to make the adjustments. Actually I also watch the graph as well to see if it is way out and cut the time down to a couple of minute for the first time.

If you can't get EQAlign to work then maybe PHD would be a good solution. Try and contact the developer. The program still being developed because version 3.0.x is only a recent version.

[Visionoz (Bill)]

Originally Posted by bartman

... that tute still indicates to me that you need the scope to be in the "park" mode position..... ie pointing to Octans. I cant see Octans from my backyard, so my question still remains : can I pick a star ( for instance tonight canopus is at the right height- for me- at about 20:30 WST on the meridian due-ish south) which means moving dec and ra?
I think I might have thought of the answer, but I'll eagerly await a contradiction to the " read what it says in the tute" response
Cause that would help......
Bartman

Hi Bart

For polar alignment (to adjust the azimuth) it is usually done on a star pretty close to the junction where the celestial equator meets the meridian and particularly in our case we have to point Northwards since we are in the SH (so any reference to point to Octans would be from someone who is in the NH) - and to correct for the latitude we pick a star in the east or west about 20-30 degrees above the horizon and pretty close to DEC 0 ie close to the celestial equator

I do PA by the drift method (takes about 30mins) or by using Alignmaster and then cross-check by drift-aligning which takes even lesser time - ie if there is no drift after 10mins I'm good to go

BTW do you have Holden car plates that is an acronym of your name? Thought 'twas you I was behind in Midland

Cheers
Bill