polar alignment, is this a bad one?

Polar error 0° 10' 41"

Hi gonzo, I’m going to direct you to another video where I show kstars in action for PA. check out the very end if you don’t want to watch the whole thing.

Ps: you will see you need to be under a minute. Say 30”

Watch the whole video and you’ll see why

I watched the entire video now, nice one. I shall do the polar alignment using the Ekos module next time I'm over there.

Nice video, thanks for posting it. I haven't tried the polar alignment tool yet but now that I have an idea how it works I think I"ll give it a go tonight.

Gonzothegreat wrote: I watched the entire video now, nice one. I shall do the polar alignment using the Ekos module next time I'm over there.

Cool! Good luck!

attempt 1:



attempt 2:



attempt 3:


<strong>VERY</strong> frustrating to say the least, on each attempt I did put the star I selected in the bullseye.
I wasn't able to check the third attempt as the clouds rolled in, but as you can see from the above it didn't go according to plans.

I think I know why.... as I am using the new Atik driver and the camera no longer works with this one, I have to use the mini guider which is powered by the QHY5, but the guider isn't 100% properly aligned to the main telescope. I do think this is the problem. As soon as there's another clear night or at least a couple of hours, I shall try again. Oh, and I will re-install the Cloudmakers Atik driver for the time being.

Gonzothegreat wrote: I think I know why.... as I am using the new Atik driver and the camera no longer works with this one, I have to use the mini guider which is powered by the QHY5, but the guider isn't 100% properly aligned to the main telescope. I do think this is the problem. As soon as there's another clear night or at least a couple of hours, I shall try again. Oh, and I will re-install the Cloudmakers Atik driver for the time being.

Yes, you should use the guide scope but no, it doesn't need to be aligned. Thats one of the beauties of it. One thing you should do is always start from park and always auto rotate the same direction. Otherwise we found backlash in the mount will give erratic results. So I always start from park and rotate west.

I start from the home position, which is scope straight up to Polaris, weight down. Go West 15° and even 30°.
I tried 3 times last night, and each time I did adjust the knobs on the mount and each time it wasn't right.

I'm not sure why your correction vector is on the green dashed line. I'm not sure what that means but it looks like you're pretty far from the NCP. I usually do the Kstars PA after a polar scope alignment so I have a pretty good alignment to start with. The Kstars PA gets me to sub 20 sec accuracy, often single digit.

I've checked the weather forecast for tonight and there is a chance of a clear night or at least enough for me to try this again. I'll report back later on...