Ad Astra Observatory

Polar alignment still sucks.

Once I get the mount aligned, everything will be fine. Until then, it’s a bunch of hooey.

I need to get the mount level, because, as usual, it’s causing me no end of grief.

My assumptions about polar alignment haven’t changed with the lessons I learned tonight:
1) Once you nail the elevation setting, the azimuth is very easy to set.
2) If the mount isn’t level, you can get close, but not nearly close enough to do any useful imaging.
3) Polar scopes are great for visual work, but for imaging, you still need to get closer. Corollary: see 1). I think that a polar scope could get you *real* close if you were 100% sure about your elevation setting. More on this later.
4) Good polar alignment software is like a good mechanic — if you find one you like, hang onto it.
5) If you dial in azimuth, then dial in elevation, and you find that azimuth has changed significantly, quit messing with the axes and get the mount level. You are officially wasting time if you don’t.

I have never had a good gut feeling about polar scopes. I admit that the Takahashi one made me feel like I was really doing something. And I admit that for visual use, once I used the polar scope, I was ready to roll for the night. And I know from past experience that once you get a really solid polar alignment once, future alignments at the same site are way easier. Because then the problem is constrained to a single mount axis, and so the push-me, pull-you interaction between the axes is totally gone. It’s getting that first alignment nailed that’s key.

I might even take the mount off of the pier and polar align it from the tripod to start. Then I don’t have to worry about “is it level?”. There’s work to be done on the alignment. It always goes like this. I spend a couple of nights and a bit of a day working on the alignment, and then it’s all gravy once I get it dialed in.

While the software was gathering alignment information in Dec, I had a hint of how the RA tracking on the mount works. I got no feeling for magnitude. But wow, it sure looks pretty smooth. I didn’t see any jumps as large as 1″. Tantalizing.