hassle-free polar alignment

[AstroDude]

Tired of wasting time getting your polar alignment done, while trying to reach down to 00:00:05 arc/sec instead of 4 arc/min..
Have you had enough of using ASPA and your still way off, or bending over twisting your neck looking through the polar scope and winging it, or even the tedious Drift alignment method, then......
try Sharpcap 3.2 Pro polar align software routine .follow the link below to a EZ to follow youtube tutorial.

https://youtu.be/ivlgbgNIeTU

(Sorry for posting twice , Robin G)

Mitch/ Astrodude

[oopfan]

Nice video Mitch.

Just a minor point: "hassle Free" is usually hyphenated "hassle-free". When I initially saw this topic the word "Free" caught my attention. I said "Oh wow, 'free polar alignment'". Then I saw "hassle" and thought "Oh cool, this free software is named 'hassle'".

I suspect this was a clever marketing gimmick on your part

Brian

[admin]

Hi Mitch,

thanks for making and sharing that video – it's excellent! I have taken note of Brian suggestion and change the title of the thread slightly to make hassle-free hyphenated.

Just a couple of points where your preferred technique differs a bit from mine. First I think I would probably turn up the camera again more rather than using the digital gain in the star detection settings although that is a matter of preference and if you got settings that work then obviously keep using them. Secondly I believe that when the star you are tracing goes offscreen during the adjustment phase, SharpCap should automatically select another star that is still on screen for you to continue to work with so it should be unnecessary to restart at that point. If you happen to get clear sky before I do I be interested to hear whether that's the case or whether there's a bike there that I need to fix.

Thanks again, Robin

[turfpit]

Mitch

Interesting tutorial - appreciate the effort in doing it.

I found the weak part of the polar alignment process is the course threads on the alt/az adjusters plus the play in my mount. I use ASPA for polar alignment. Once I have the finder scope and telescope aligned on a distant land based object I swap eyepiece for imaging camera. Then I carry out a 2 + 4 mount alignment and the ASPA using the capture screen. So there is only one uncomfortable viewing up the polar scope - prior to mount alignment.

ASPA is useful as it works without sight of the Pole Star. Plus it is available across multiple capture programs & other operating systems such as Linux, Pi and Macintosh.

Anyway, hope you have a great 2019 for imaging.

Dave

[astromusic]

So, is the ASPA something proprietary to Celestron scopes, or is there a way to use it on all scopes?

[turfpit]

All Star Polar Align is a facility in Celestron Nexstar handsets to allow polar alignment of the mount without sight of NCP by using any star.

Synscan handsets have the same facility, see page 38
https://inter-static.skywatcher.com/dow ... 8V1-EN.pdf

I would expect other manufacturers would have a similar facility but the name would be different.

I have used ASPA to good effect on my CG5 and AVX mounts.

Dave