Polar allignment routine with equatorial wedge on Meade LX scope

Using SharpCap's Polar Alignment feature
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mioxzy
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Joined: Wed May 22, 2019 3:20 pm

Polar allignment routine with equatorial wedge on Meade LX scope

#1

Post by mioxzy »

Until now I have used Sharpcap with great satisfaction with my telescope (Meade LX90) in altazimuth configuration. Wanting to take a step forward I got the equatorial wedge, I assembled everything correctly but at this point I'm not sure how to perform the polar alignment routine with the fork mount on the equatorial wedge in Sharpcap. To complete the second step in the routine it is required to rotate the axis in right ascension by 90 degrees, but in doing so the telescope points 90 degrees from the polar :( . How can I proceed further? Definitely something wrong in my procedure.

Thanks for the support
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admin
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Re: Polar allignment routine with equatorial wedge on Meade LX scope

#2

Post by admin »

Hi,

I must admit that I've never used a wedge to turn an altitude/azimuth mount into an EQ mount, but as I understood it the wedge tilts the mount so that what was the vertical axis of the mount points towards the pole – thus your azimuth axis becomes the RA axis and the altitude axis becomes the declination axis.

If this is right then the starting point would be with the scope pointing straight towards the pole (would be pointing towards the zenith if the mount was still in altitude azimuth mode). From this position if you rotate the RA (azimuth) axis through 90° then the scope should still be pointing towards the pole.

Hope this helps, Robin
mioxzy
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed May 22, 2019 3:20 pm

Re: Polar allignment routine with equatorial wedge on Meade LX scope

#3

Post by mioxzy »

Hi, Robin, thanks for the advice. The problem was caused by a misconfiguration of the neutral position of the telescope, my fault. As I can say for now, the polar wedge is a tough beast to align because of the screws that have to be tightened during the procedure. This cause some micro displacement that affects the precision of the allignment. For now I've managed to get a nice polar align at about 40/50" but I'm satisfied with that.
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Re: Polar allignment routine with equatorial wedge on Meade LX scope

#4

Post by admin »

Hi,

Glad to hear that you got it going. Actually most mounts except for the very high end ones have pretty rough and ready adjustment controls for altitude and azimuth when aligning. That was one of the reasons that I designed the SharpCap polar alignment so that you don't need to run two separate phases to align separately in altitude and then in azimuth – with plenty of mounts adjusting one causes offset to the other which makes that sort of two-stage approach incredibly hard to use.

Cheers, Robin
deansj
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Joined: Sat Jun 20, 2020 12:15 am

Re: Polar allignment routine with equatorial wedge on Meade LX scope

#5

Post by deansj »

I'm jumping on an old thread, but am looking for any users who may be able to confirm that the same starting position applies for a Celestron SE mount on an EQ wedge?

'Much appreciated.

John
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