Quote:
Originally Posted by Startrek
Star alignment and subsequent polar alignment will always be more accurate using your main camera and capture software with its polar alignment tool rather than an eye piece.
Your eyes have limitations and so does the eye piece , the camera is so much much more efficient in terms of sensitivity and resolution etc... and most capture software usually have a zoom in feature for tighter accuracy when centering stars
Atmospheric conditions can also affect the accuracy of your polar alignment to some degree as well.
Cheers
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Thanks Martin.
Unfortunately, due to the skies being cloudy where I am (Kiama Heights, NSW), I wasn't able to do this tonight.
I did, however, set the mount (just the mount with power and HC - nothing else) up in the house just to practice the process of polar alignment using the Synscan controller.
I had Stellarium up on my computer as well to help me out.
[Note: Obviously I wasn't able to do the adjustments using the hand controller arrows for the 2-Star Alignment nor was I able to do the adjustments using the altitude & azimuth bolts.]
When I was doing it - the 1st Alignment Star (PA Star) I had to choose was Achemar due to being very close to the south meridian. As a 2nd Alignment Star I then chose Fomalhaut.
Were these two stars good choices?
(An aside - not that it matters much since this was a practice run indoors - but the resulting PA Error was: Mel=+000°00'42" Maz=+000°00'38")
The HC didn't give the option of Acrux for my PA Star and then (subsequently) Hadar for the 2nd Alignment Star.
I'm guessing this due to my location and the time of night I was doing it.