Drift Alignment Help

[gmbfilter (Geoff)]

Recently purchased HEQ5PRO and am having trouble with drift alignment. I am trying to follow Geoff Smith's article, also Andys Shot Glass My problem is that everything seems reversed

When I'm supposed to be adjusting for azimuth, the attitude control brings the star back onto the E..W line in the and visa versa.

Help Please

[beren]

This seems to work for me {refractor/90"diagonal/eqmount}.....after setting up the EQ mount roughly due south and declination set for my location I first find a suitable star to the east for the altitude correction and make sure it lines up with the illuminated eyepieces cross-hairs when moving both axis {also check to see if the finder-scope is centred correctly, helps finding a star in the next step without moving the illuminated eyepiece in the diagonal}. Once that's done use your dec drive to highlight the movement and place the star on the cross-hair that's right angled to it. Closely watch for declination drift, if there is any use your altitude adjustment to move the star the opposite direction. Repeat the procedure until there's no dec drift after 5 mins, stop watch comes in handy to monitor progress. Once your happy slew the scope so its lined up with a suitable star approx above you and proceed with the azimuth correction. Go through the same procedure again but instead of moving the star in the opposite direction use the altizimuth adjustments so the star moves in the same direction as the drift movement. Anyhow this how I do it

[Matty P (Matt)]

There are many great tutorials on Drift alignment on the web but sometimes they can be just be confusing to most beginners. I found that when I started learning how to drift align. Reading too many tutorials just made things worse because some of them just didn't make sense.

Beren has pretty much covered the procedure you need to follow too drift align successfully.

A handy tip to remember is that if a stars movement/drift speeds up when you make a correction you know you need to adjust the mount in the opposite direction.

Hope this helps.

[sheeny (Al)]

Yeah I agree with the posts so far. I don't want to add too much because many different ideas creates confusion, but one thing I will add, which I think is the most important thing when learning to drift align, is:

start by making big adjustments.

A wise fella by the name of 1ponders taught me that one!

Watch the direction of drift and get a feel for the rate of drift. Make a big adjustment and check the drift again. If the direction is the same and the drift is faster you have gone the wrong way. If the direction is the same but the drift is slower, keep going the same direction. If the direction has changed go back by 1/2 the amount of the previous adjustment.

It will get you polar aligned quick! (Binary search method 101).

Paul demonstrated this at the first IISAC: his first polar alignment adjustment in azimuth was to move the whole mount a few inches CW or CCW (more than the azimuth screws would allow).

Al.

[gmbfilter (Geoff)]

Thanks for the encroachment, I think my big mistake is failing to have fun, hopefully stars to night.

[whmacs]

Originally Posted by beren

Go through the same procedure again but instead of moving the star in the opposite direction use the altizimuth adjustments so the star moves in the same direction as the drift movement.

Thanks Beren (and everybody else), that's a golden piece of advice for altizimuth, I've always had issues trying to guess (make adjustment, time, make another adjustment) which direction to move in alt! To be honest, I've never read that one in any of the tutorials.

Regards,
Stephen