The list includes polealignmax, align master, eq align, wcs, pempro, polar finder, star targ 2. I collimated the polar scope and when it got dark i polar aligned as accurately as i could. This technical note sets out the procedures required to accurately polar align a synta eq3eq5heq5 or synta eq6. Easy polar alignment for astrophotography step by step. To get really accurate ncp alignment this program will show you where to put polaris in. Alignmaster is not free but at 19, it is an absolute bargain. Qhy polemaster electronic polar scope high point scientific.
If you are in the southern hemisphere, polar alignment is much more difficult due to the absence of bright stars near the celestial pole. Tutorials section this section is only for the posting of actual tutorials, either single post or multiple, to ask questions or comment on a tutorial, please use the tutorial discussions section where you will find a topic titled for each topic posted here, it just helps stop the topics becoming convoluted and lets the tutorials flow properly. Polar alignment sharpcap lunar, planetary, solar and deep. I have used several methods of polar alignment over the years. This means that youll be able to capture longer exposures without the worry of tracking errors. Now autoguiding on single axis portable tracker finally works. However if combination of mount, telescope and camera fov can slew to target would it be sufficient for astro imaging with additional guiding such as phd. Polar alignment by the star drift method takes more time than using a polar scope, but a simple procedure using two stars will get your mount right on the celestial pole. The following is a list of all the polar alignment software that i am aware of. A precise telescope mount polar alignment using alignmaster software. The qhy polemaster electronic polar scope was designed to make your polar alignment routine easier, and more precise.
Fine tuning my the polar alignment accuracy of my telescope mount using the qhy polemaster. The best program for polar alignment mounts cloudy nights. If you are just setting up for a night of visual observing, stop here and get to the observing. What is very important is that when one polar aligns, if the polar alignment is not precise, your mount is tracking along an offset declination axis. Precise polar alignment in just minutes using the softwares simple step by step directions. Furthermore, precise tracking of celestial objects also depends on an accurate polar alignment. The polemaster uses this image to calculate the ncp, and that is the first step in achieving a precise polar alignment.
Macroberts article outlines the drift method for polar alignment as it is universally quoted, where the drifts of stars in two equatorial fields are used to determine the direction towards which to move the polar axis to better align the it with the celestial pole. By aligning the axis of your telescope mount with the motion of the sky, you can accurately track objects in space. Very popular software for web cam imaging, which i believe can also be used for polar alignment. Using an eq mount simple polar alignment for beginners. So, for manual polar alignment without software support it is recommended to make polar alignment in five steps. After monitoring is started, as long as a goto has not been executed, the software will continuously determine the pole position frame by frame. Drift alignment with phd2 the drift align tool in phd2 can be used to quickly obtain a precise polar alignment of your equatorial mount. Align on any bright named star without extra polar alignment accessories, apps, or other assistance adjustable eq head position to optimize center of gravity over the tripod and. This tutorial best suited for the eqneq6atlas mounts. This guide will talk you through a rough polar alignment that will be easily good enough for observing with. However, this is accurate enough for most peoples needs. The declination drift method allows a much more accurate alignment by monitoring the drift of selected stars.
Accurate polar alignment of a german equatorial mount is essential in order to undertake longexposure astroimaging, otherwise your final resulting images will show trailed stars or field rotation. Octantis in your polar scope reticle for your location using your phones gps, allowing a quick and accurate polar alignment. Starshoot p1 polar alignment camera w atlasprosvp adapter. Sure, to do it you have to have the guide scope and guide camera mounted on the telescope, but if you are after a precise polar alignment you likely will be imaging and will want to guide with that guide cam and scope anyway.
By rotating your mounts right ascension axis by 15 degrees or more, the software can confirm this value. Allstar polar alignment celestron telescopes, telescope. Then, you are asked to rotate the ra axis of your telescope mount to determine the rotation of the mechanical axis. Precise polar alignment using your smartphone and polar scope align pro not daytime mode this method requires the use of polar scope align pro or a similar app and to have the tripod leveled. No matter which camera tracker or telescope mount youre using, when it comes to astrophotography, accurate polar alignment is critical if you have ever struggled to polar align your telescope mount with the north or south celestial pole, the qhy polemaster may just be your. Use of alignmaster allows the user to have a very precise polar alignment with minimal effort and time in contrast to other methods such as the popular drift alignment watching a star drift slowly offcentre in a crosshair eyepiece and correcting for it. With the ipolar epolarscope from ioptron, accurate polar alignment has never been so simple. Level the tripod and set the star adventurer to midnight, october 31st, in time zone 0 using the graduation circles. Accurate polar alignment with eq3eq5heq5 and eq6 mounts. But it also possible to perform with smaller heq5 mounts. Select a suitable bright star from the nexstar hand controls database. The process takes a little bit of practice, but after doing it a few times, you should be able to obtain an accurate polar alignment in minutes.
Octans, a dim star in the dim octans constellation. It is one of the few programs that are accurate even in lower latitudes by correcting for atmospheric refracti. This results in visible field rotation, something that is the staple limit of altazimuth mounts when it comes to longexposure astrophotography. The telescope mount manual will describe how to move the mount in these directions. Any other software installed excep the driverssoftware for your camera or. Polemastertm electronic polar scope installation and user. Precise polar alignment for longexposure astrophotography if you want to do longexposure astrophotography, or are setting up an observatory with a permanentlymounted telescope mount, you need polar alignment that is as close to perfection as can be obtained. Allstar is our exclusive, innovative polar alignment procedureavailable on. A camera is not needed, but an ocular with illuminated crosshairs is helpful and will give a more precise alignment.
The drift align tool in phd2 can be used to quickly obtain a precise polar alignment of your. Align the telescope with the sky using the twostar alignment method. I intend to include more detailed comparisons, but in the short term, i hope that the following is useful. A precise polar alignment can provide you with many benefits when it comes to astrophotography, including better autoguiding accuracy. Polar scope align will calculate the position of polaris or. Personally, i find polar alignment with a polar alignment scope faster and more convenient than a mounts polar alignment software, and sufficiently accurate for most purposes, so i rarely use the software feature on mounts that have a polar alignment scope. Simply follow the steps prompted by polemaster software and you will have a very precise polar alignment. Obviously there could be others that i am not aware of. Accurate polar alignment is a specific requirement of any kind of astrophotography as only by achieving this alignment can accurate tracking of celestial bodies be made. You can test your polar alignment accuracy without a sharpcap pro license to learn how the feature works, but you will need to buy a sharpcap pro license to use the polar alignment adjustment stage that guides you in to correct alignment. For noncomputerized telescopes, a polar scope is the best option. Simply attach the p1 to your mount with the included adapter, load up the software on your computer, and follow the easy step by step directions to align. The p1 performs a precise polar alignment in just a few minutes time, with an accuracy of up to 30 arc seconds.
Polar alignment is an essential first step towards a night of visual observation or astrophotography. Well, it is very important to have precise polar alignment pa. Page 1 of 2 polar alignment, guiding and pec posted in beginning and intermediate imaging. You can easily achieve alignment accuracy better than 1 arcmin in 5 minutes of time. The drift align method can be used in either hemisphere by using free software called. Cgxl equatorial mount and tripod celestron telescopes. It is one of the few programs that are accurate in lower latitudes by correcting for atmospheric refraction so expect results to agree only with precise software and not most simplistic polar align apps see the accuracy section in the website for details. Tutorial on how to perform polar alignment with the hour angle method. Simple if the procedure is too complex it will be prone to error. Precise tracking still depends on an accurate polar alignment.
Follow the instructions given by the autostar software. The drift align tool in phd2 can be used to quickly obtain a precise polar alignment of your equatorial mount. Precise polar alignment declination drift technique. Another nice app hoping someboy would do it would be one which would align precisely 2 smartphones in the 3 directions of space using wifi or bluetooth. It is much more easier than the manual scheinermethod or the usage of guidemaster. As one becomes more experienced with practice, the polar alignment process will become second nature and will take only a fraction of the time as it did the. Parot is software for ultrafast and precise polar alignment of equatorial mounts. Polar alignment sharpcap lunar, planetary, solar and. Orion starshoot p1 polar alignment camera lowest prices. Astromate x64 is a project for automating repeating astrophotography tasks, such as equatorial mount polar alignment and target centering, by integrating existing tools and especially plate solving to the ascom telescope control interface. If you want a more accurate alignment for astrophotography then you could start with my guide for aligning the heq5 which will give a more precise alignment. Now when i perform very first goto of the star alignment, the handset software assumes that we start from perfectly polar aligned position and also from home position of the mount, so the first goto should be somehow precise. For me, the ideal polar alignment procedure should be.
This star will assist the software in correctly aligning your telescopes mount with the north. There are two common methods for improving the polar alignment. The weather has finally cleared enough that i can actually use the scope the i bought in the flo clearance sale a while ago. Survey of polar alignment methods celestial wonders. Precise polar alignment declination drift technique for long exposure imaging, the alignment using polaris will not be perfect and stars will slowly drift across the image. For a more precise polar alignment, you should consider getting the optional. I turn the mount on and feed the handset with all the current data and proceed to star alignment procedure. If the mount is moved by accident and polar alignment is lost, the alignment can be restored by adjusting the mount to. Tpoint by software bisque, used in conjunction with thesky tpoint will provide polar alignment data which can be used to polar align the mount. You take one image of the celestial pole, rotate the mount around the ra axis and take another image. To use the current version of parot, you will need. Polar alignment can be confusing, but its easier than you think. Check the files tab above for links to download ipolar software, see a compatibility chart or download the instruction manual. Polar alignment free polar alignment software download.
Page 1 of 3 the best program for polar alignment posted in mounts. One star alignment to enable accurate goto instead of 3star alignment. With its help im able align my eq6 mount with subarcminute accuracy in five minutes of time. Therefore, alignment using software of this kind can be inaccurate by several arc minutes. Now you have completed the initial polar alignment. Now that i understand sharpcaps procedure, its polar align tool is just easier and, i believe, more accurate.
The process takes a little bit of practice, but after. Polar alignment, as performed by many amateurs, can be very time consuming if you spend a lot of time getting it more precise than is needed for what you intended to do with the telescope. But further adjustments need to be made for precise polar alignment. Precise polar alignment declination drift technique astronomy. Align to at least one calibration star on the opposite side of the meridian. Allstar polar alignment allows quick and very precise polar alignment. However, you still need to bend yourself, or knee down on the ground to perform the polar alignment the most straight forward way for polar alignment.
I spent a good while setting up the scope in the light. The drift align method can be used in either hemisphere by using free software called phd2. Phd2 drift alignment the drift align tool in phd2 can be used to quickly obtain a precise polar alignment of your equatorial mount. For drift aligning i use the software tool drift align within phd2. Its a simple method that does not require setting circles or the knowledge of date and time. Simply attach the p1 to your mount with the proper adapter, load up the software on your computer, and follow the easy step by step directions to align your mount faster and easier than ever. They are bit different than the larger mounts but the principle is the same. Many computerized equatorial mounts including forkmounted telescopes on wedges have a polar alignment routine built in to their software to provide a more accurate alignment. Phd2 is guiding software inspired by stark labs phd guiding. Although all of these methods work with varying results, i am not really happy with most of them for one reason or another. Even with a visible star very near the north celestial pole ncp, the true celestial pole can be a very elusive place to find without assistance.
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