Experienced visual observer here, but beginner at AP. Polar alignment seemed mystical to me. This video is a huge help. Thank-you for posting it. I would guess , once you set the declination for your area that the next night if you have a scope you bring out for the night, the polar alignment should start out closer.
Hey Mitch. Fantastically executed. The alignment routine is my worse nightmare, everytime. I'm going to practice this routine until I get results. Many thanks for your time on this.
Excellent video. I found you because of a problem I am having with the iOptron iPolar software. I use the SkyGuider Pro with the iPolar upgrade. This configuration replaces the polar scope with a camera to be used with the iPolar software for polar alignment. Many people (including me) feel that iOptron did not do us a favor by replacing the scope with a camera that has buggy software. If the software is buggy, and you can't rely on it, a second alternative is a must. I am going to test the SharpCap software this evening by first achieving polar alignment with iPolar, then checking my work with SharpCap. If I can get them both to agree, then awesome. Given the known issues with the iPolar software, if there is disagreement between the two, this evening I will opt for the alignment provided by SharpCap and see what happens when I guide with PHD2. Again, thank you for the informative video.
Great video! I learned now a better way to polar align my scope without spending more than a couple hundred dollars in a pole master. Thanks again for sharing!
This tool in Sharpcap was probably the best £20.00 I ever spent. Have it for 2 years now but it already saved me probably tens of hours of valuable star-time.
This was a very helpful primer on the topic. After trying it myself, I understood what was going on and was able to to accomplish the task pretty quickly after the first couple of times.
thanks for the extra tip. moving the mount from the weights side to prevent pointing errors during your process of polar align. I always learn from your vids.
Mitch Just wanted to say Great Job. love all your vids..The Sharpcap vid was awesome. Soon as i had finished watching it i went right over to the sharpcap website and bought a one year license. First try i had a few issues. But tried again last night and had my quickest ever polar align. Keep posting em Cheers Andy
Mitch I do have one question i hope you can answer. I guess i could go on the sharpcap forum if not..( using a mono cam) once you analyse you sensor (filter free i imagine) then use the brain function, would you then use your lrgb or narrow band filters to do the exposure and gain calculations ? Cheers Andy
@@Andyportervt i tried using my Ha filer one night and got a "could not find exposure within 300 sec" so i dont think it was designed for that... but i could be wrong..
Thanks for this video, esp with the daytime images of the mount to help beginners understand what clutch to unlock etc. Can't wait for a clear night to try it out.
Thank you for this great tutorial.. I was all set up to go this weekend, fired up Sharpcap pro and couldn't see anything .. Wish I has seen this on Friday! Like the style of your tutorial .. Subscribing.
A trick is to start with the OTA rotated one way or the other 90 degrees, then when it tells you to rotate 90 degrees you bring it back to upright. If you do that the Alt/Az controls become a lot more intuitive and when you're done aligning you don't have to rotate the scope, possibly moving the tripod in the process.
great tut Mitch.. especially how you emphasise on turning the knobs gently. i wonder what's up coming next, you ended with "but, i am gonna do..." lol i'm referring my friends who are new to pi to your pi tuts. keep them coming.. luvs from the Netherlands
I have no experience, and I only downloaded SharpCap yesterday. So I was mostly unable to follow what you are doing. I will need to watch more instruction, and work with my real mount before this makes much sense to me. It's more tedious than I hoped it would be.
Great video! Is it possible to use this technique on a mount like the skywatcher star adventurer? I imagine the telescope and camera need to be exactly aligned with the RA axis of the mount for this to work. How exactly would I do that? I know how to get the scope rotated in RA so it's at the "home" position, but I have no way of knowing if my Dec is exactly aligned with the polar axis? Thanks
yes it is possible if the camera is not a DSLR. (not supported) scope/camera does not have to be dead center, mine is not. on the Star Adventure does not have a DEC motor so there no alignment need there, nor is the a need for it , as long as you can move the Alt/Az knobs your good to go,.. the other thing it may not work in you are trying to use you scope to polar align, if its over 400 MM with a real narrow FOV. in my opinion. its needs 1-5 degrees. but please do try it. go from home to 90 degrees and move those knobs .
@@BrokenPik my lens is 200mm and I use a ZWO ASI 183MM Pro so that should be supported. How does sharpcap calculate the alignment if the camera is not precisely aligned with the mount's polar axis then?
No one ever mentions that the last step of polar alignment with Sharpcap is to lock the mount head down with the bolts that attach the head to the tripier or tripod. If you have a large mount as I do and a large heavy telescope, failing to do this last step will result in ruining your polar alignment as the mount moves. I have found that I have to get the accuracy of polar alignment with Sharpcap to within one arc minute to one and a half arc minutes and then begin carefully tightening the (lock down bolts) of the mount head. Not the altitude and azimuth bolts. On lower end mounts like Sena, ie. Orion, I have the HDX110 MOUNT, because of machining defects and low quality control, as you adjust one , say altitude, it will throw off the other, azimuth. Not a problem with Astrophysics or say Software Bisque mounts. If you listen closely to Robin Glover, (creator of Sharpcap), in his TH-cam video, he plainly says at the end of his lecture that you have to lock the mount down as a last step of polar alignment.
Hello Mitch! Does it matter on the focal length of your main telescope I have a Explore Scientific 102 with the focal reducer which brings it down to 571mm And I also have a Orion 60 mm on top which should I use thanks?!?
Hi Mitch, Always enjoy your videos. But as far as the actual numbers SharpCap generates with regard to pole proximity, can they be that accurate? Since you are doing a motionless alignment on just the guidescope, wouldn't the numbers determined by a drift method differ somewhat? Have you compared, say, with the PHD2 drift align tool? Have been using PoleMaster for a while, but this seems better. And I assume the alignment with the main scope would need to be very close as well. Would appreciate your thoughts. SharpCap appears to offer a better approach. Thanks, John
Thank you for your Questions and concerns, this conversation is best answered on Robin Glovers Sharpcap Forum. According to him the guider scope does not even have to be perpendicular the the main scope. the reasoning is that even the main scope sitting in the saddle has cone value errors so its not concentric the the north celestial pole either. that being said if you use PHD2 and run the calibration wizard you will find out how far off the celestial pole the mount really is! and 95% of the time its bang on , not withstanding the seeing conditions. Im not sure i understand your statement on ""motionless alignment"" means , and its not just on the guider scope , its the actual mount that is being centered , based on the plate solved sky near polaris. I good friend of mine uses Polemaster and he just now found out that his polar alignment has been off , as he put it "" i cant tell how far in arc/sec that dot in the circle really is. there's no way to tell, you just wing it..""" he is now reconsidering using SC 3.2 Pro to quantify the results of the polemaster. Hope this helps, no harm intended in my comments.. Im bar far no expert on this matter but my PHD2 # speak volume while guiding (( 0.45)) on a good night. se image based on a toasted AVX mount ... www.flickr.com/photos/rcfmitch/46649967581/in/dateposted-public/ Mitch
Thanks Mitch. By motionless, I meant non-tracking, so by your reply better PHD2 guiding results are the true confirmation. My PoleMaster results were about 2 minutes from the NCP, which I previously thought were good. This explains some of my guiding graphs, which do show a see-saw in Dec. Looking forward to trying this software out during my next session. Cheers, John
Hey Mitch nice routine! technically, if u achieve "excellent" polar alignment and rotate the mount back to home position, should it still say excellent? I will also start doing the routine twice at least, seems like a really good idea, thank you!
twice is good insurance, but now i hear being off a bit is even better, something to do with the mount only correcting in 1 direction instead of that seesaw PHD2 graph !!! needs to be tested...
Polar alignment is very critical to a happy night out imaging but the mistake I see most people make is failing to make sure they are level- The most important tool in my kit is a $3 level from harbor freight.
@@kwitee While you don't need to be level, per se, you do need to make sure your home position is spot on if you use your main or guide scope for your polar alignment and to make sure you get accurate go-to.
@@AstroDenny yes, the better your starting position is, weights straight down in RA, scope all the way up in DEC, the better the initial Goto. But that still has nothing to do with levelling the tripod! Levelling might be helpful for repositioning the whole kit the next time you are out, as the altitude of the RA axis would be close to true if you haven’t shifted anything in the meantime.
Great video. A question, does your guide scope need to be perfectly aligned with your main scope for this to be work or be accurate? Some times I move my guide scope to get a good guide star and don't re-align it with the main scope.
Great tutorial - thanks! I have a question. My Polaris star is obstructed because my telescope is on a south facing balcony. Can I use this method to polar align facing only south? I am in the northern hemisphere in Europe.
Lachezar= Nope, SC needs to see about 3 degrees of polaris surroundings to plate solve the sky/stars. you will need to learn ASPA i think. Or use PHD2 drift polar alignment.
@@BrokenPik Thank you for the quick response. I will try and find another tool to help me get my polar alignment more precise. I have tried the celeztron ASPA tool and gotten my alignment to within about 5 minutes on both axis. I do not have a view to the south below about 35° at my home where i am learning how to use my equipment. I will move to another site which has a clear view once i have got a little more confidence. Your tutorials are very well done and i have learned a lot from them even though i have a different mount. Thank you again and keep them coming! If you think of a good tool to help with polar aligning a scope on a wedge please let me know as i am very interested in astrophotography.
Great video!! found you through suggested videos. I just started a TH-cam Channel not long ago and very interested in the human evolution and spirituality topic. Keep following your passion and creating great content. Sending you good vibes and lots of love 💖
What about locking everything down. You're not mentioning that you have to get it to close, maybe 1'30" arc seconds and then lock them both down or else the polar alignment will be ruined every time you slew to a new target, because the weight will shift and throw it off. No body mentions that. You have to lock every thing down when you get it close or it looses polar alignment. Different mounts,(depending on the build quality), require more or less accuracy before the final polar adjustment, (which has to be done with the altitude locking bolts and the azimuth locking bolts.)
Thanks for making this! Question: Assuming you have a slight bit of cone error and your scope is not perfectly aligned to the polar axis of the mount, and then assume that your guide scope is not perfectly aligned to the scope, thus compounding the error. If you use the guide scope for polar alignment, are you really getting an accurate polar alignment of the mount?
well if you did not get a good polar alignment from your cone error then your guiding would be terrible... but that being said,,, my guider scope is way off and i get 0.55 RMS in PHD2.. that i guess is the proof...hope this helps.
@@BrokenPik Hi Mitch, I meant to have a 5 second exposure of the camera to reduce the seeing variability and I also collect data on how far my mount moves in arcseconds when tightening the knobs so when polar aligning with the loose knobs I overcorrect and tightening up brings me back to the best that my seeing allows here. Where I live we always have a very strong jet stream so usually I am happy with less than 5 arcseconds error. PHD2 doesn't seem to like that and I always receive the message to have a polar alignment closer to 5 arcminutes? But I know I am a perfectionist so will always try for perfect polar alignment every time. Love the videos Mitch and keep up the good work.
You have lost me at 7:20. Did you go east or west RA horizontal from the Home position? And why are you repeating the process? Is it because NCP is drifting out of view of the guidecam?
Dan Kahraman as for your first question I’m not sure. I believe he is turning the azimuth knobs until the numbers on the bottom of the screen start to decrease. As to why he is repeating the process, he first sets the altitude (up and down) and then the azimuth (left and right). Now as he adjusts the azimuth (sometimes, not always) it can mess up his altitude adjustment. So you go back and forth over and over making adjustments until you can run the process and get “excellent” for the alignment
Not sure that would have any advantage , it just would cut down your time in wanting to get imaging as soon as possible. but hey can't hurt. your call.
@@JamesLee-pf2dz well if your heading to a target for imaging im not sure why a person would use SC 3.2 , you should use APT with the 2 plate solver softwares (Plate solver 2 and All star PS ) and they need to be configured in ApT 3.65.2 then your all set to center any target. Now i guess i need another video on how to setup APT plate solving...
@@BrokenPik I use Sharpcap for the polar alignment... but each time I move the mount during the procedure, it needs to solve the frame, which takes a long time for me.
@@JamesLee-pf2dz Oh ok , that makes more sense, ... crank the gain up to about 80 % and go with 2 sec leaving time for each move to settle till next adjustment. if it still takes to long something else is up here ...
Just one question (maybe foolish). I haven't used Sharpcap yet to do this procedure (I haven't been blessed with clear skies after so long). Can you do this with a DSLR camera?
Ok. I’ll have to use my ASI120MM for polar alignment and once that is done, replace it with my DSLR. I think there will be no problem with that. Thanks for the very prompt answer. Clear skies!
I am trying to use sharp cap for PA. I use pro version but once I click on PA it say it can not be solved. I have a camera in eye piece that is connected to my lap top. Could you give me an idea of what might be going wrong. Thank you in advance
@@BrokenPik I am using an EQ5 Reflector mount. I am using a windows laptop. I have rigged the laptop to the eye camera which is an SVBONY. The is level Facing north and the altitude is set at 52. I hope this help you
does this require view of the north side properly or you can do this with south facing side. meaning what to do if your view to north is blocked and can't see polaris?
as far as i know you need to be fairly close to Polaris in order for SC to plate solve the surrounding stars ... Did you try it or are you just asking ?
@@BrokenPikhave never used sharpcap before and was eventually planning on using it. But seeing the video gave me the idea that I have to be able to see Polaris otherwise it won't work.
@@llamarvasquez1803 That should work great if your Lodestar is Ascom compliant, ive only used it on ZWO And Altair astro. check out the Forum ( Sharpcap) . Robin Glover is the Owner.
@@BrokenPik a nice bit of one sided declination drift will help make the declination guiding smoother. Polar alignment is not going to fix your distorted stars
![ILLSLICK - THE KING'S LANDING [Freestyle]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/feIJJnNkTfk/mqdefault.jpg)
Experienced visual observer here, but beginner at AP. Polar alignment seemed mystical to me. This video is a huge help. Thank-you for posting it. I would guess , once you set the declination for your area that the next night if you have a scope you bring out for the night, the polar alignment should start out closer.
Fairly close..
Hey Mitch. Fantastically executed. The alignment routine is my worse nightmare, everytime. I'm going to practice this routine until I get results. Many thanks for your time on this.
Glad i could help...
Excellent video. I found you because of a problem I am having with the iOptron iPolar software. I use the SkyGuider Pro with the iPolar upgrade. This configuration replaces the polar scope with a camera to be used with the iPolar software for polar alignment. Many people (including me) feel that iOptron did not do us a favor by replacing the scope with a camera that has buggy software. If the software is buggy, and you can't rely on it, a second alternative is a must. I am going to test the SharpCap software this evening by first achieving polar alignment with iPolar, then checking my work with SharpCap. If I can get them both to agree, then awesome. Given the known issues with the iPolar software, if there is disagreement between the two, this evening I will opt for the alignment provided by SharpCap and see what happens when I guide with PHD2. Again, thank you for the informative video.
keep me posted...
Excellent tuto merci beaucoup, je vais faire ça, dès qu'il ne pleut plus!
Great video! I learned now a better way to polar align my scope without spending more than a couple hundred dollars in a pole master. Thanks again for sharing!
Great , cheers , and have fun
This tool in Sharpcap was probably the best £20.00 I ever spent.
Have it for 2 years now but it already saved me probably tens of hours of valuable star-time.
Agreed.... :-)
This was a very helpful primer on the topic. After trying it myself, I understood what was going on and was able to to accomplish the task pretty quickly after the first couple of times.
Glad it worked out for you... enjoy better guiding!
Mitch, love your videos. I learned a lot from your Pixinsite videos. Thanks for the time you put into them
Enjoyed making them.. more to come i hope.....
Excellent Mitch. Very Detailed. Love your Commentary.
Thanks Ray. send me an Email.. here= rcfmitch.wixsite.com/altair-support or here rcfmitch at gmail dot com.
thanks for the extra tip. moving the mount from the weights side to prevent pointing errors during your process of polar align.
I always learn from your vids.
Thanks....
Mitch Just wanted to say Great Job. love all your vids..The Sharpcap vid was awesome. Soon as i had finished watching it i went right over to the sharpcap website and bought a one year license. First try i had a few issues. But tried again last night and had my quickest ever polar align. Keep posting em
Cheers
Andy
KOOL , thats what im talking about ...
Mitch I do have one question i hope you can answer. I guess i could go on the sharpcap forum if not..( using a mono cam) once you analyse you sensor (filter free i imagine) then use the brain function, would you then use your lrgb or narrow band filters to do the exposure and gain calculations ?
Cheers
Andy
sorry realized i posted this to the wrong vid
@@Andyportervt i tried using my Ha filer one night and got a "could not find exposure within 300 sec" so i dont think it was designed for that... but i could be wrong..
Wonderful video. I have been considering using SharpCap and now I know it would do wonders for my polar alignment.
Give it a whirl.. :-)
Thanks for this video, esp with the daytime images of the mount to help beginners understand what clutch to unlock etc. Can't wait for a clear night to try it out.
Have fun, should work great...
Thank you for this amazing video. You explained this very well. After watching a couple times I know I can do this.
Thanks Amy, you ll be an expert in no time. Practice makes perfect.
Thank you for this great tutorial.. I was all set up to go this weekend, fired up Sharpcap pro and couldn't see anything .. Wish I has seen this on Friday!
Like the style of your tutorial .. Subscribing.
Cheers Man.. more video on the way .... clear skies to you.
A trick is to start with the OTA rotated one way or the other 90 degrees, then when it tells you to rotate 90 degrees you bring it back to upright. If you do that the Alt/Az controls become a lot more intuitive and when you're done aligning you don't have to rotate the scope, possibly moving the tripod in the process.
that's awesome. Thank you!!
great tut Mitch.. especially how you emphasise on turning the knobs gently. i wonder what's up coming next, you ended with "but, i am gonna do..." lol i'm referring my friends who are new to pi to your pi tuts. keep them coming.. luvs from the Netherlands
Thanks , BHC, was going to go on with Bahtinov mask focusing routine but ran into some tech problems.. LOL
Thanks! Great Tutorial! Now I just need clear skies to try it!
I have no experience, and I only downloaded SharpCap yesterday. So I was mostly unable to follow what you are doing. I will need to watch more instruction, and work with my real mount before this makes much sense to me. It's more tedious than I hoped it would be.
yes , but it will make your imaging session 3 times better .. it takes time , and yes its hands on.
Astro Dude how does laptop with sharp cap connect to mount and camera? Does it need to connect to a guide camera on the RASA 8?
@@paulwilson8367 all you need is your guide scope. and laptop
Great video! Is it possible to use this technique on a mount like the skywatcher star adventurer? I imagine the telescope and camera need to be exactly aligned with the RA axis of the mount for this to work. How exactly would I do that? I know how to get the scope rotated in RA so it's at the "home" position, but I have no way of knowing if my Dec is exactly aligned with the polar axis? Thanks
yes it is possible if the camera is not a DSLR. (not supported) scope/camera does not have to be dead center, mine is not.
on the Star Adventure does not have a DEC motor so there no alignment need there, nor is the a need for it , as long as you can move the Alt/Az knobs your good to go,.. the other thing it may not work in you are trying to use you scope to polar align, if its over 400 MM with a real narrow FOV. in my opinion. its needs 1-5 degrees. but please do try it. go from home to 90 degrees and move those knobs .
@@BrokenPik my lens is 200mm and I use a ZWO ASI 183MM Pro so that should be supported. How does sharpcap calculate the alignment if the camera is not precisely aligned with the mount's polar axis then?
@@antoinepaletta6547 SC 3.2 polar alignment use Plate Solving just like SGP. that's it. ez peezy..
Thanks for the great video... what guidescope and camera are you using.
No one ever mentions that the last step of polar alignment with Sharpcap is to lock the mount head down with the bolts that attach the head to the tripier or tripod. If you have a large mount as I do and a large heavy telescope, failing to do this last step will result in ruining your polar alignment as the mount moves. I have found that I have to get the accuracy of polar alignment with Sharpcap to within one arc minute to one and a half arc minutes and then begin carefully tightening the (lock down bolts) of the mount head. Not the altitude and azimuth bolts. On lower end mounts like Sena, ie. Orion, I have the HDX110 MOUNT, because of machining defects and low quality control, as you adjust one , say altitude, it will throw off the other, azimuth. Not a problem with Astrophysics or say Software Bisque mounts. If you listen closely to Robin Glover, (creator of Sharpcap), in his TH-cam video, he plainly says at the end of his lecture that you have to lock the mount down as a last step of polar alignment.
your Absolutely right. please make a video on this and share it with everyone. im to sick these days to do anything.
Hello Mitch! Does it matter on the focal length of your main telescope I have a Explore Scientific 102 with the focal reducer which brings it down to 571mm And I also have a Orion 60 mm on top which should I use thanks?!?
even though some ppl use the main scope, i do not recommend it ... stay with your guider @ 60/200MM Orion-
Astro Dude awesome thank you very much🔭 keep the great videos coming
Nice Video dude.I use sharpCap Polar align once it states excellent that's where I stop. And PHD works awesome.
Agreed... :-)
Great video..just a quick question.. which camera was sharp cap using.. your guide cam ? Or did you have a camera mounted in the polar scope hole ?
at the 00:55sec mark i show the top guider / camera which is being used for the polar align... Not the polar scope. or the main scope.
Cheers.
Hi Mitch,
Always enjoy your videos. But as far as the actual numbers SharpCap generates with regard to pole proximity, can they be that accurate? Since you are doing a motionless alignment on just the guidescope, wouldn't the numbers determined by a drift method differ somewhat? Have you compared, say, with the PHD2 drift align tool? Have been using PoleMaster for a while, but this seems better. And I assume the alignment with the main scope would need to be very close as well.
Would appreciate your thoughts. SharpCap appears to offer a better approach.
Thanks,
John
Thank you for your Questions and concerns, this conversation is best answered on Robin Glovers Sharpcap Forum. According to him the guider scope does not even have to be perpendicular the the main scope. the reasoning is that even the main scope sitting in the saddle has cone value errors so its not concentric the the north celestial pole either. that being said if you use PHD2 and run the calibration wizard you will find out how far off the celestial pole the mount really is! and 95% of the time its bang on , not withstanding the seeing conditions.
Im not sure i understand your statement on ""motionless alignment"" means , and its not just on the guider scope , its the actual mount that is being centered , based on the plate solved sky near polaris. I good friend of mine uses Polemaster and he just now found out that his polar alignment has been off , as he put it "" i cant tell how far in arc/sec that dot in the circle really is. there's no way to tell, you just wing it..""" he is now reconsidering using SC 3.2 Pro to quantify the results of the polemaster.
Hope this helps, no harm intended in my comments.. Im bar far no expert on this matter but my PHD2 # speak volume while guiding (( 0.45)) on a good night. se image based on a toasted AVX mount ...
www.flickr.com/photos/rcfmitch/46649967581/in/dateposted-public/
Mitch
Thanks Mitch. By motionless, I meant non-tracking, so by your reply better PHD2 guiding results are the true confirmation. My PoleMaster results were about 2 minutes from the NCP, which I previously thought were good. This explains some of my guiding graphs, which do show a see-saw in Dec. Looking forward to trying this software out during my next session.
Cheers,
John
@@johnadastra1754 Ah gotcha.. have fun. :-)
Very well explained and great to watch. Thank you, learned a lot. Subbed.
Thank you Paul.....
Many thanks for this, very helpful.
glad it helped.
If you had a DSLR on your main scope and the electronic camera on the other scope could you still use SharpCap - ie with the guidescope?
the guide scope is the way to go actually.
Hey Mitch nice routine!
technically, if u achieve "excellent" polar alignment and rotate the mount back to home position, should it still say excellent?
I will also start doing the routine twice at least, seems like a really good idea, thank you!
twice is good insurance, but now i hear being off a bit is even better, something to do with the mount only correcting in 1 direction instead of that seesaw PHD2 graph !!! needs to be tested...
Polar alignment is very critical to a happy night out imaging but the mistake I see most people make is failing to make sure they are level- The most important tool in my kit is a $3 level from harbor freight.
Agreed !!!
You don’t need to be level.
@@kwitee While you don't need to be level, per se, you do need to make sure your home position is spot on if you use your main or guide scope for your polar alignment and to make sure you get accurate go-to.
@@AstroDenny yes, the better your starting position is, weights straight down in RA, scope all the way up in DEC, the better the initial Goto. But that still has nothing to do with levelling the tripod! Levelling might be helpful for repositioning the whole kit the next time you are out, as the altitude of the RA axis would be close to true if you haven’t shifted anything in the meantime.
@@kwitee I beg to differ- To get to that point, you either have to level your mount and trust the rings, or level the mount head to get accurate home.
Great video. A question, does your guide scope need to be perfectly aligned with your main scope for this to be work or be accurate? Some times I move my guide scope to get a good guide star and don't re-align it with the main scope.
no, it can be off quite a bit...and still have great alignment...
@@BrokenPik Great, thank you for the info!
Great stuff Mitch, thanks !
Thankz, Robert...
Great tutorial - thanks! I have a question. My Polaris star is obstructed because my telescope is on a south facing balcony. Can I use this method to polar align facing only south? I am in the northern hemisphere in Europe.
Lachezar= Nope, SC needs to see about 3 degrees of polaris surroundings to plate solve the sky/stars. you will need to learn ASPA i think. Or use PHD2 drift polar alignment.
Thanks I will check those!
Great tutorial Mitch, this was very helpful for me. I have an alt/az mount with a wedge. Is there any way to use this function with my mount?
it was design i think to get great guiding for EQ mounts.
@@BrokenPik Thank you for the quick response. I will try and find another tool to help me get my polar alignment more precise. I have tried the celeztron ASPA tool and gotten my alignment to within about 5 minutes on both axis. I do not have a view to the south below about 35° at my home where i am learning how to use my equipment. I will move to another site which has a clear view once i have got a little more confidence. Your tutorials are very well done and i have learned a lot from them even though i have a different mount. Thank you again and keep them coming! If you think of a good tool to help with polar aligning a scope on a wedge please let me know as i am very interested in astrophotography.
@@jeffweiss2131 i will look into it ...
Great video!! found you through suggested videos. I just started a TH-cam Channel not long ago and very interested in the human evolution and spirituality topic. Keep following your passion and creating great content. Sending you good vibes and lots of love 💖
So being I am new to this, After you got excellent PA do you then bring the mount to the home position and turn on tracking?
That is correct, and in some instances, you would/could do a 1 or 2 star align to model your Mount to the sky.
If you have a fixed pier...how often does this have to be done?
some of my acquaintances are running SC 3.2 every 30- 45 days. ( traffic, trains, earthquakes under 2.0)
hope that helps.
What about locking everything down. You're not mentioning that you have to get it to close, maybe 1'30" arc seconds and then lock them both down or else the polar alignment will be ruined every time you slew to a new target, because the weight will shift and throw it off. No body mentions that. You have to lock every thing down when you get it close or it looses polar alignment. Different mounts,(depending on the build quality), require more or less accuracy before the final polar adjustment, (which has to be done with the altitude locking bolts and the azimuth locking bolts.)
What camera are you using when using the software. Is it through the objective lens or the guide scope lens.
From the guide scope
I was using the AA GPcam2 IMX 224 cam , It has to be through the finder scope with at least 2-5 degrees field of view. ( Starwave 50 MM F 4)
I use a zwo 60mm finderscope
My polar alignment must have been way off then
Thanks for making this! Question: Assuming you have a slight bit of cone error and your scope is not perfectly aligned to the polar axis of the mount, and then assume that your guide scope is not perfectly aligned to the scope, thus compounding the error. If you use the guide scope for polar alignment, are you really getting an accurate polar alignment of the mount?
well if you did not get a good polar alignment from your cone error then your guiding would be terrible... but that being said,,, my guider scope is way off and i get 0.55 RMS in PHD2.. that i guess is the proof...hope this helps.
It doesn’t have to be aligned, cone error doesn’t matter, we are not doing GOTOs. So, yes!
Hi Mitch. Did you do any prep work with PHD2 before starting the video? I see you had PHD2 running during this video.
I didn't, it was just open..
@@BrokenPik I was just wondering if PHD2 needed to be running/openat the same time or something. Great video by the way.
@@akacagen yea, no problem, since im using SC to align i cannot use PHD2 at the same time since the guider scope and camera are tied up.. :-)
Clever.
I try to acheive 5 seond exposures to cut down on the seeing that makes it almost impossible to dial in a below 5 arcsecond error
Peter, what your saying is could not go below 00:00:05 arc/sec ? or you were using 5 second exposure to do the alignment?
@@BrokenPik Hi Mitch, I meant to have a 5 second exposure of the camera to reduce the seeing variability and I also collect data on how far my mount moves in arcseconds when tightening the knobs so when polar aligning with the loose knobs I overcorrect and tightening up brings me back to the best that my seeing allows here. Where I live we always have a very strong jet stream so usually I am happy with less than 5 arcseconds error. PHD2 doesn't seem to like that and I always receive the message to have a polar alignment closer to 5 arcminutes? But I know I am a perfectionist so will always try for perfect polar alignment every time. Love the videos Mitch and keep up the good work.
Mitch good show excellent... By any chance are you a teacher, you describe things so well
Steve
Thanks Steve, im the farthest thing from a teacher, more like a preacher .. LOL ..
Well that still is teaching something
@@Steve_The_Ignorant_Astronomer Agreed! :)
You have lost me at 7:20. Did you go east or west RA horizontal from the Home position? And why are you repeating the process? Is it because NCP is drifting out of view of the guidecam?
Dan Kahraman as for your first question I’m not sure. I believe he is turning the azimuth knobs until the numbers on the bottom of the screen start to decrease. As to why he is repeating the process, he first sets the altitude (up and down) and then the azimuth (left and right). Now as he adjusts the azimuth (sometimes, not always) it can mess up his altitude adjustment. So you go back and forth over and over making adjustments until you can run the process and get “excellent” for the alignment
Your already ahead of me I can't even get my GPCAM2 to register light/dark in sharpcap.
Thank you for this video. I want to ask you how i can polar align in the Southern hemisphere using Sharpcap. Thanks again
Go to the Sharpcap forum and ask Robin Glover, cause im not sure...
Great video.
Hi Mitch, do you know how to fix cone and orthogonal OTA mount errors?
Hi , ive done nothing since my heart attack, sorry..
If one is using an Celestron AVX mount could they save time by doing an All Star Polar Align first then tweaking with SharpCap polar align.
Not sure that would have any advantage , it just would cut down your time in wanting to get imaging as soon as possible. but hey can't hurt. your call.
Just use sharp cap I have an avx mount
@@ACEOFSPACE2000 Agreed i have an AVX also , go straight to SC 3.2 polar align...
I have a decent laptop but the plate solving takes too much time. How do you optimize this...? You have almost real time plate solving!
What is your acquiring software ? SGP... APT ?
@@BrokenPik I use APT. I thought the frame solving was done in Sharpcap but I suppose the acquiring software matters..?
@@JamesLee-pf2dz well if your heading to a target for imaging im not sure why a person would use SC 3.2 , you should use APT with the 2 plate solver softwares (Plate solver 2 and All star PS ) and they need to be configured in ApT 3.65.2 then your all set to center any target.
Now i guess i need another video on how to setup APT plate solving...
@@BrokenPik I use Sharpcap for the polar alignment... but each time I move the mount during the procedure, it needs to solve the frame, which takes a long time for me.
@@JamesLee-pf2dz Oh ok , that makes more sense, ... crank the gain up to about 80 % and go with 2 sec leaving time for each move to settle till next adjustment. if it still takes to long something else is up here ...
Awesome. Thank you : )
Your Welcome ...
how perfect do you have to be when your slew to horzontal, do you need a level?
no, not at all , just get as close as horizontal as you can, if your off, the software will indicate "" please rotate further""'
@Stever's Narrow-band Imaging Channel now! now ! lets play nice . LOL , and yes your right....
Keep in mind at the beginning i said "" the mount has to be powered OFF "" :-)
@Stever's Narrow-band Imaging Channel Say Wawtt .. LOL , my mount is in Hibernate mode when im doing this...
Thanks guy. I think I'll try it now.
Just one question (maybe foolish). I haven't used Sharpcap yet to do this procedure (I haven't been blessed with clear skies after so long). Can you do this with a DSLR camera?
No , im sorry , its not supported at this time, something to do with liveview/EAA.
Ok. I’ll have to use my ASI120MM for polar alignment and once that is done, replace it with my DSLR. I think there will be no problem with that. Thanks for the very prompt answer. Clear skies!
@@enriqueboeneker :-) yep.
Hi, what are the red and green squares on the screen?
star position found for alignment plate solving.
Can I use this procedure using my dslr through my scope as I don’t have a guide scope?
Unfortunately DSLR s are not supported at this time in SharpCap 3.2.
I am trying to use sharp cap for PA. I use pro version but once I click on PA it say it can not be solved. I have a camera in eye piece that is connected to my lap top. Could you give me an idea of what might be going wrong. Thank you in advance
""I have a camera in eye piece "" please be more specific with your equipment..!
@@BrokenPik I will get you the details of the camera scope and mount tomorrow is this al you need. Thank for responding
@@BrokenPik I am using an EQ5 Reflector mount. I am using a windows laptop. I have rigged the laptop to the eye camera which is an SVBONY. The is level Facing north and the altitude is set at 52. I hope this help you
does this require view of the north side properly or you can do this with south facing side. meaning what to do if your view to north is blocked and can't see polaris?
as far as i know you need to be fairly close to Polaris in order for SC to plate solve the surrounding stars ... Did you try it or are you just asking ?
@@BrokenPikhave never used sharpcap before and was eventually planning on using it. But seeing the video gave me the idea that I have to be able to see Polaris otherwise it won't work.
@@niraj_dave yep , but there is PHD-2 new drift align you could try. cheers
Thanks for share
Can you tell me why my gain slider is greyed out and I can't adjust it?
normally that might be a driver issue ..... what camera ?
@@BrokenPik GPCAM2 130
This polar alling was done with the guide camera or imaging camera ?
guide camera ...
Thanks for replay
Where in Canada are you?
South western Ontario.
What scope are you using for this software?
as you saw on the video , its the 50 MM starwave finder guider, with a Altair astro GPcam2.
Astro Dude does it have to be a 50mm guide scope... I have a Orion 60mm with a lodestar X2 would that work?
@@llamarvasquez1803 That should work great if your Lodestar is Ascom compliant, ive only used it on ZWO And Altair astro. check out the Forum ( Sharpcap) . Robin Glover is the Owner.
Astro Dude awesome thanks for the info! Keep up the great videos 🔭
I'm lazy, I just turn the tracking off and slew the 90degrees RA using eqmod before doing the align.
same thing , as long as the mount is not tracking while plate solving.
Hey, you have used your main cam or guide cam?
use your Guider scope/camera...
@@BrokenPik thanks!
People! Please don’t obsess about getting numbers to zero. Less than 5 arcminutes will be fine with most imaging focal lengths.
So like 950 mm to 1478 for my C8 Edge , or 300mm to 420 mm for my AT72ED. im struggling keeping stars round at 0.08 Arc/SEC .
forget 1 arc/min.
@@BrokenPik a nice bit of one sided declination drift will help make the declination guiding smoother. Polar alignment is not going to fix your distorted stars