confused drift aligner

telecasterguru (Frank) · #1 07-03-2009, 04:07 PM

I've had my eq6 for two weeks now and read all the stuff I can on drift alignment and everything was going great until I brought my scope to the beaches for the first time last night.
I can point to the west easily enough to do an alignment but the house is on the north side of where I set up the scope and cuts out about 45 degrees of the sky. I couldn't get a good alignment last night. Where is the best place to do my second alignment? Is there something I am doing wrong? All suggestions gratefully accepted.
Thanks

peter_4059 (Peter) · #2 07-03-2009, 05:27 PM

Frank,

Have you had a look at this article? This is what I used to get started and found it very easy to follow. The only thing I do differently is I nudge the scope and watch which way the star moves to work out which way is north/south.

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/63-405-0-0-1-0.html

telecasterguru (Frank) · #3 07-03-2009, 05:34 PM

I have read the article, thanks. It says to find a star at the meridian near the equator but I am not sure what this means. I am only new to this. I thought it meant straight up, but I don't think this is right. Then I tried pointing to the North and it seemed to work much better. Is this where the meridian near the equator is?

peter_4059 (Peter) · #4 07-03-2009, 06:30 PM

Set up your EQ6 so the polar axis is facing as close to true south as possible. (your counterweight bar will start pointing down - ie vertical). Rotate the scope in RA so the counterweight shaft is horizontal. Rotate the scope in DEC toward the north so the scope is at a right angle to the polar axis - you are now pointing close to the intersection of the merdian and the equator. All you need to do then is find a nearby star and start drift aligning.

Hope that makes sense?

rogerg (Roger) · #5 07-03-2009, 07:44 PM

Another way of saying it....

The meridian goes straight over your head from directly North to directly South.

The equator runs more or lesswhere the planets and moon go across the sky, at 0 declination, in line wth Rigel (one of the brightest stars in the constellation of Orion). The equator runs East to West.

If it's any conselation, drift alignment does take practice. It took me a year or so of casual amateur astronomy to get a full grip on what RA and DEC were, where the Meridian and Equator were, and how to get a drift alignment successfully under way. Of course I'm sure I could've spent more nights working on it and got the hang of it a lot quicker with more dedcation, but you can't spend every night doing the boring stuff

White Rabbit · #6 09-03-2009, 02:37 PM

At the moment after about 0830pm any star in orion will do for the northern alignment. The star you use doesnt need to be exactly on the plane of the meridian and the equator. Spica is good for the eastern.

With Drift Alignment, for the northern aspect I always complete the "S" meaning if the star drifts above the Xhair I adjust the scope so that it completes the top part of an "S". When you adjust the scope from left to right the star should appear to move to the right as you adjust. When the star drifts below the xhair you need to complete the bottom part of an "S" and the star should move to the left in the eye piece as you adjust the scope.

For the eastern view remember this "altitude is easy" when it drifts just pull it back to where it should be.
Make sense???

Have a go at the drift alignment simulator it helped me a lot.

Sandy

White Rabbit · #7 09-03-2009, 02:41 PM

http://www.petesastrophotography.com/

oops!!!