Ad Astra Observatory

After getting the mount “close” last night but then moving the pier topper and redoing, I took a couple of runs at polar alignment tonight, too.
One thing I definitely learned is that my polar scope is misaligned in some way. Put the star on the “2010” hash mark, run the mount in RA, and the star drifts up to 1985 and down past 2015. Maybe there’s a way to fix that without sending the mount in for repair. Maybe I’ll just ignore the polar scope for awhile…

I spent a lot of time thrashing in WCS. I seem to remember that when I was doing this with the G-11, I ended up writing down each correction I did.

I figured out that I had 2 settings incorrect. First, I had “RA star” set to “in the north” instead of “in the south”. grr. Also, much more important, I figured out that I have to set “Inverted” corrections when running on Veronica. I kept doing Elevation changes and getting back larger errors. Once I set “invert”, it converged within 3 iterations.

The mount is now at (according to my feeble understanding of WCS) about +90 in azimuth, and about -70 in elevation. I’m not sure what units the “correction factor” numbers are in WCS, but I think this is pretty close.

Before I shut down for the night, I’ll give the polar scope one last peek. But I am certain that the star won’t be “where it’s supposed to”.

I think I can get the polar alignment to a “no correction” in each axis, rather than a “really small correction”. ~90 is correctable. ~70 somewhat less so. I am shooting for <40. One more set of iterations tomorrow, then some more unguided testing. I need to recall which way is "north" in the camera, also.