Simple polar alignment for beginners lonewolf online. Here is another way to precisely polar align the cgem mount. The interface makes it very easy to do a drift alignment on a nongoto mount. A simple and quick way to get a one degree initial polar alignment for your equatorial mount. With the aid of your astro imager, your can accurately detect, record, and correct this drift in just minutes.
Phd2 drift alignment the drift align tool in phd2 can be used to quickly obtain a precise polar alignment of your equatorial mount. Using polemaster and following a few simple, easytofollow steps, you can achieve that perfect polar alignment in 23 minutes, with an accuracy of up to 30 arc seconds. Qhy polemaster polar alignment camera cloud break optics. In this video i show how i use a polar alignment scope to initially align my cgem 800 before using aspa all star polar align. Preparation make sure your mount is reasonably level. I teach various polar alignment techniques in my astrophotography workshops in perth westen australia. This list of sequence alignment software is a compilation of software tools and web portals used in pairwise sequence alignment and multiple sequence alignment. The alternative of drift alignment is more accurate, but that takes hours to do, and its tediously iterative. Altazimuth mounts, driven or not, dont qualify for drift alignment. Ken has put together some video tutorials on the new phd2 polar alignment tools. Basics of drift alignment polar alignment iceinspace. First perform a quick alignment using the proceedure described above. Polar alignment wizard the polar alignment wizard is quick and simple requiring only a few minutes to align your mount making it perfect for portable setups that must be aligned each night.
Pempro uses the polar drift alignment method to help you achieve good polar alignment. The question i have is, according to the cgem manual you have to do a 2 star alignment, or a quick align or select last. A technique known as drift alignment has been used for many years, and can achieve an extremely accurate polar alignment. Ive never used it for auto guiding but ive been using it for polar alignment for several years now. I would have to manually adjust it every once in a while. Phd2 is a telescope autoguiding software that automates the process of tracking a guide star. See structural alignment software for structural alignment of proteins. Making sure a telescope is accurately aligned is a very important step when doing astrophotography and these telescope autoguiders can help. A very important conflict needs to be kept in mind. Celestron polar finder for cg5 advanced, cgem, and. There are a couple of ways you can get software like. The drift align tool in phd2 can be used to quickly obtain a precise polar alignment of your equatorial mount. Nexremote is a software emulator of the exact same firmware contained in your hardware handcontroller. The book does mention a few things here and there, one being balancing in dec, however the safety screw on.
The process takes a little bit of practice, but after doing it a few times, you should be able to obtain an accurate polar alignment in minutes. I intend to include more detailed comparisons, but in the short term, i hope that the following is useful. Obviously there could be others that i am not aware of. Quick and accurate polar alignment using your ccd imager. The drift alignment process is purported to be the gold standard, so im going to try it out if i ever get some clear skies around here. The sky mapping is fine, though you will have to align the starsense to your telescope first. The following is a list of all the polar alignment software that i am aware of.
Phd2 is guiding software inspired by stark labs phd guiding. Both devices tend to need a lot of sky, so that impacts how you are controlling the domes open position. Once thats understood, using it from then on should be a breeze. An eyepiece with illuminated cross hairs or reticle is needed for the drift alignment method. Summary of the star drift method of polar alignment. Polar drift alignment pda and static polar alignment spa. Fully automatic calibration of a cgem is not possible because there is no home sensor.
What i mean by that is the starsense looks at the sky, to determine where the telescope is pointing, however, the mounting sytem is nowhere near good enough to make this accurate, you have to run the starsense align once, then immediately align them up on a single star, using ever higher magnification. This feature in byebyn replaces the need for a illuminated eyepiece. Drift alignment is a great way, if not the best, to get accurate polar alignment. In the following discussion, ill be emphasizing drift alignment as applies to a wedge mounted lx200 or other sct, but the principle for drift alignment is. Celestron developed the nexremote application to be a full replacement of the functionality of your handcontroller. Alignment software free download alignment top 4 download. In order to drift align, you need an eyepiece with cross hairs and an equatorially mounted telescope. This is based on the standard nexstar software that ships on the hand controller of the cgem mount. With a little luck, i may be able to explain how it works, fairly painlessly. Quick and accurate polar alignment using your ccd imager the best way to assure you have an accurate polar alignment is to measure and correct the actual drift caused by any misalignment. In case of any problems or support you may require after purchase, you will need to work directly with celestron. Unfortunately it is very time consuming, since the drift of a star over time must be observed. Telescope autoguiders astrophotography autoguiders. The purpose of drift alignment is to get the polar axis of your mount parallel to the earths axis.
Moreover, star alignment will become significantly easier as you get to pick whichever stars you wish, from the realtime view of the night sky on the planetarium software stellarium or cartes du ciel, and perform the star alignment with however many stars you wish. Celestron mount connection openphdguidingphd2 wiki github. Polar alignment information southern hemisphere roger. Waiting until the stars come out on a moonless night which is perfect for imaging is the wrong time to try drift alignment for the first time. Polar alignment can be done by the drift method but ive found that this takes too long for my patience. By aligning the axis of your telescope mount with the motion of the sky, you can accurately track objects in space. Polar alignment is an essential first step towards a night of visual observation or astrophotography. Im a little confused regarding drift alignment and initial setup of the cgem. Flash upgradeable hand control software and motor control units for downloading product updates over the internet.
Get some help polar aligning your celestron cgem, advanced vx, or cg5 mount with the addition of the polar finderscope. Probably the most common reason for frustration with drift alignment is that amateurs dont practice it enough. The polemaster is an innovative product pioneered by qhyccd to relieve the pain of polar alignment. With a singlestar drift alignment, it will keep a star within the small box on the dualcross hair ir ep for between 25 and 30 minutes. The drift method can be used for the fine tuning of the polar alignment process, polar alignment without polaris, or if your mount does not have setting circles polar scope. The drift alignment method is one way of achieving this. Best idea is to put in a crosshair eyepiece and align one crosshair in the ra direction by turning off the drive and watching a star drift.
Ive had some good and bad days while observing with the cgem mount however as the topic says id like to have some tips on polar aligning. This is an important aspect of deep sky astrophotography because it allows you to focus on capturing successful long exposure images and get the most out of your telescope mount phd2 is easy enough for a beginner to use right away, yet also includes sophisticated. Install the finder into the polar finder port, located at the rear of the mount, and focus the eyepiece until the reticle is sharp. Phd2 is free of cost, open source, and communitydeveloped and supported. You still have to do the drift alignment, but you use your dslr which is already in place to drift align instead of swapping it for an illuminated eyepiece. I find that it takes less time to do a polar alignment using eqalign on my super polaris mount as it does to go through the whole aspa procedure on the cgem. Repeat adjustments until no drift is seen for 5 minutes. Because ill setup the mount during the day, it wont be in perfect polar alignment. It is easier to perform with an illuminated reticle eyepiece, but at a push, you can use the crosshair on.
Allstar is our exclusive, innovative polar alignment procedureavailable on select celestron computerized telescopesthat allows users to choose any bright star not just one near the ncp while the software calculates and assists with polar alignment. If long exposure photography several minutes or more is planned, then a better polar alignment is required. Alignment software free download alignment top 4 download offers free software downloads for windows, mac, ios and android computers and mobile devices. This alignment will suffice for finding objects with a computerized telescope, and for shorter exposure or widefield photography. To skip all this info and just get the essential quick cheat sheet for polar alignment download the drift alignment in the southern hemisphere document.
Easy polar alignment for astrophotography step by step. Autoguiders are small sensor cameras that track stars so the astrophotographer can monitor drift alignment before taking their exposures. How to polar align a cgem mount using celestrons nexstar software. For exposures longer than these and closer to the poles, a photographic method of polar alignment that is applicable only to permanent installations may be required. Equatorial mount polar alignment making it easer youtube. Now there is a great solution to this ageold problem. For the highest precision for longexposure imaging, see the next section of drift polar alignment. Good polar alignment can be performed relatively quickly using special finder scopes with polar reference reticles, but to get the precise polar alignment that will make your mount perform at its best for high quality astrophotography and science measurements, often requires timeconsuming drift alignment. By marsg76, september 8, 2017 in discussions scopes whole setups.
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