Ad Astra Observatory

A,

Because polar alignment is “in the mount” and has nothing to do with
what’s *on* the mount, I can now go mess around with balance to my
heart’s content.

After a rebalance, I will have to rebuild the pointing model, but I

don’t think that I need much if any more polar alignment adjustment. I
mean, sure, I’m off 2′ in Az. I may get picky someday and try to kill
that. But if I can get the balance right (which I’ll test by doing
meridian flips until my eyes bleed), then I think that 2′ of RA error
will be more than sufficiently small to get my tracking problem fixed.

So.

I am *not* going to touch the polar alignment for awhile.
Tonight I will play with balance and see if I can get meridian flips to
work better. Can you think of another test to test my 3D problem?
Do you think that meridian flips require a pointing model? In a perfect
world, no, but with all the stuff that the model … er… models.. it

seems like it might be necessary for best results. What do you think?

You have said that you do meridian flips and continue imaging on the
same object, right?

J