Just to report on tonight alignment. I have put the mount very close to the NCP and tested the wizard and it worked very well indeed!
BUT if the mount is not close enough to the pole and it asks to move the mount, it always detects the NCP on the wrong side of URSA MINOR. It does capture and solve the images correctly but moves to the wrong direction (inverted). Anyone having this issue????
Not sure if I had the same, but I indeed did get a message that the NCP wasn't in view (while I must have been very close) and when I gave permission to move the mount it went too far and I cancelled it. I redid it, ignored the message and all went fine anyway.
Part of the message is hidden for the guests. Please log in or register to see it. I will check this out on my mount and see if I can reproduce it. Thanks for the report.
Can someone also try to verify the results by using another method to double check? It doesn't appear that anyone check their results with another method thus far.
I encountered this. It appears to trace wide arcs and then the pointer jumped 180°. I thought it was cone error preventing me from pointing at NPC, but I recalibrated that and I wasn't that far off.
Using EQMod Driver with Skywatcher HEQ5
Supernov that's exactly what happened to me but I did let it finish the movement and noticed the wrong place on kstars. Then I made a second alignment and like you, it worked.
Ihoujin I noticed that jump too. When it reaches very close to polaris it jumps 180°.
Well, I should have known that slewing uncalibrated mount near the pole might end up in odd discontinuities like this. I will try to test it tonight and see if I can figure out a way to do it properly and safely. If not, I'll disable the auto slew and just advise the user to move the mount closer themselves.
But thing is, I know the NCP was in view I wasn't that far off. And yes I have to test the accuracy in another way but guiding at 0.3" afterwards sort of tells me it was bang on.
Hi Jasem, first the align model is working very well, I have checked that with PHD2 drift align and I am really closer than I was before.
Also I can make longer exposures without drift. I was guiding with 0.5" (both RA and DEC) and now I am on 0.4" (RA)/0.2"(DEC) so I it's really a big improvement.
The issue is only the first positioning of the mount, If made manually there's no problem. Thank you for this method, it really helps.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Jasem Mutlaq
I tested the alignment method yesterday. Just a simple remark. When a slowing orientation (west or east) is chosen at first rotation it remained not set at second rotation.
Anyway I didn't had enough time to test the accuracy as the clouds went to ruin the rest of the night.