Quote:
Originally Posted by roboh
G'day everybody,i'm new to all this and i wanted to ask anyone about polar alignment on a Celestron Nexstar SE.They tell you how to do it in the manual but its writen for the northern hemisphere and (maybe i'm really stupid or something) i just cant seem to get it right for here in Melbourne.The scope is good but i wanna do some astrophotography and i'm still getting a lot of drift.Can anyone help please,i'd really appreciate it.
|
Hi Roboh, or Mark,
Is your scope a Nexstar 4 SE ?
Because they DO have a equatorial wedge builtinto the standard tripod.
If this is the case, most of the forgoing posts are irrelevent.
I do have one, and I have polar aligned it, and Ican share your pain, it is very counter intuitive. I actually changed the direction it was pointing four times I think during the process before getting it right.
And when you do get it right, it works quite well.
But be prepared for anyone who sees it to be telling you you have it pointing the wrong way, because it looks to be.
If your nexstar SE is a 5, 6, or 8, then I think you need to buy the optional wedge as mentioned earlier. And I have been told a de-rotator will not work on a Celestron alt az goto.
Depending on your answer, I will continue, after reminding myself how I finally did it. But I do recall that it did not require finding south celestial pole, as the computer worked that out from the two or three star alignment process. and it was very accurate.