Hi Howard,
I would recommend a few different options, depending on how your setup is
working.
The first is Alignmaster, a piece of software that does essentially exactly
what you are talking about with the sync method automatically. See
http://alignmaster.de/ ;<http://alignmaster.de/>
Second is using a piece of software to aid in alignment that uses a plate
solver. These include AstroTortilla which has a tool that will calculate polar
alignment error quickly by solving an image taken through your telescope, after
which you can adjust your az and/or alt and then re-calculate until the error
is lower than whatever your desired threshold is.
The other is Ekos, a suite of astrophotography tools integrated into Kstars,
which does a very similar process but works well with INDI / the Linux
ecosystem in general if that is what your controlling equipment is already
using.
Finally, there’s a piece of software called PARot
(https://sourceforge.net/p/parot/wiki/Manual/ ;
<https://sourceforge.net/p/parot/wiki/Manual/>) which offers another method of
software-aided polar alignment.
Hope you find one or more of these helpful!
Gray
On Feb 1, 2017, at 4:38 PM, Howard Anderson <handy13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi,
I am seeing a small amount of field rotation in 40 minute images
I am taking with my remote TOA-130 on a CGE 800 (Older)
mount. Seems to be worse at high latitudes but seems to
diminish to zero when the object is near the Zenith. Does
not completely make sense to me but I have the images to
show that it is happening that way.
I believe this is because my mount is not precisely aligned.
I do not like the drift method.
Years ago I and others worked out a method for extremely precise
rapid alignment of the LX-200 scopes using a SYNC operation
which moved the coordinate system so that it would sync
with a star that was centered in the field. I believe this
sync operation essentially "rotated" the celestial sphere
coordinates.
This is the procedure I use to get near-perfect polar
alignment of the LX-200:
http://www.astroshow.com/astrotip/align.htm#iterative%20alignment%20procedure ;
<http://www.astroshow.com/astrotip/align.htm#iterative%20alignment%20procedure>
I would like to do something similar for the CGEM mount. It has
a SYNC operation in the menu.
Does anyone know if the Meade sync operation and the
CGEM SYNC operation do essentially the same thing?
If so I can use a similar procedure to what I use with the
LX-200.
It is 270 miles to my remote telescope so I would like to think
this through in advance. I will probably go there within two
or three months...
Any suggestions not involving the drift method would be welcome indeed...
Thanks,
Howard
