On Mar 20, 2019, at 5:51 PM, Greg Schwimer <schwim@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
- Set up the mount, check the alignment. I like to do this during the day
using the brightest star I can see in the sky - the Sun! ***With the OTA out
of the saddle***, point the mount at the Sun. Put a nice straight piece of
copper tubing (or similar) in the saddle and hold it square to the side of
the saddle. Put your hand behind the tubing. You're looking for a perfectly
round shadow with no eclipse projected on your hand. This will leave you with
a fairly decent rough polar alignment.
- Verify your polar alignment. Slew to a star. Does it center? Try the other
side of the pier. Use whatever method you normally do from here to get the
alignment closer in. Use drift alignment or something like Tpoint or the
polar alignment assistant in Kstars/Ekos (free!) to tune your alignment with
the pole star.
- Assess the periodic error of your RA drive. There are various tools that do
this. In short, start the guider (with corrections disabled) and track what
the mount does over time. You will probably see an oscillation in the RA
axis. If your mount has PEC, program it with this info and enable it. Usually
you don't have to do this very often, depends on your mount capabilities.
Good luck!
Greg
