Got to try out my polemaster last night

[jazzin]

Although I never could image because clouds from TS Nector kept rolling in, I was able to use my QHY polemaster for the first time and it seems like it was an overwhelming success. I just followed the numerous tutorials on youtube and bam, I ran phd2 and my total RMS numbers were sub 1.00 - 1.10, which is amazing for me. I just have one question. Should I run the polemaster before I do my 2+4 goto alignment? Last night I ran it after I did my goto alignment and when I got to the part where the polemaster software says to rotate the RA axis a minimum of 30 degrees, I had to hold down the arrow button on the HC a long time to get 30 degrees and it didn't slew like in the youtube videos cause I had already done my goto alignment.

[UlteriorModem]

The go to should be done after your PA. Goto has nothing to do with polar alignment honestly and the more accurately aligned the scope the more accurate the goto should be.

I would like to try a polemaster someday but just don't have enough of the northern sky available to me.

Next time you do an alignment with the pole master afterwards try a drift alignment with phd that will tell you how close you really are

[jazzin]

I always just used did a rough alignment with my scope pointed at Polaris and then did my Goto alignment, used my Bahtinov Mask to find the focus on a bright star and then did drift alignment to get my PA, then ran my sequence in SGP. Worked everytime.

I never did the drift alignment first then my goto alignment.

Now that I have the polemaster, I probably won't do drift alignment anymore.

Thanks for the input Tom!

[Aidi]

Jazzin, Are you plate solving?

I do my PA using polemaster...typically I get .65 - 1.0 on the RMS... After that, in SGP I copy/paste the url from AstroBin and do a slew to then center... Plate solving does it’s thing and target ends up bang I. The middle of the FoV. Or, I just load an image into SGP, right click and center. Mount slews, plate solves and centres the target.

Never needed to do any other alignment other than PA with Polemaster.

[UlteriorModem]

Yea I never do a goto alignment anymore either. Plate solve and synch works a treat! But plate solve works best when you have a good PA.

If your close enough with the pole master no worries. But if you really want to see how close you are a drift alignment is hard to beat.

[Star Dad]

I don't know what happened on my last night out - 2nd with the polemaster. Got a "perfect" alignment supposedly. I slewed to my target, got focus on the camera, and I'm sure I did an Astrotorilla plate solve to make sure I was on target (I always do a plate solve)... and as I recall it found the target within a few seconds and did not recenter. Supposedly I was spot on. I took 120 subs. When I processed them this week, there were only stars on the image - so I sent it to Astrometry.net to confirm what was on the image. I was over 2 degrees off! Unfortunately I have to wait, yet again, for another clear night. What's really disturbing is that I slewed to the moon after the 120 subs for a video and it was spot on. As I'm typing this I'm wondering if somehow I might have managed to accidentally slewed to a spot in Stellarium - though that requires an awkward <CTRL><1> key press. Not likely. I know it's only electrons, but what a waste of time.

My images are showing a rejection rate of about 1 in 8 instead of 1 in four for 1 minute unguided imaging. (I believe the "bad" images are due to the worm gear's inherent wobble). I have yet to get PHD2 to control the mount successfully. Each time I've tried I get 2500ms guiding commands and they never stop - Before the Polemaster I usually got it to settle down to between 1 and 2 pixels after about 30 seconds. Not so with the PM. It never seems to catch up (of course perhaps the mount drifted those 2 degrees while under PM control). I have to confess however, I have not spent a lot of time trying to get PHD2 to work... I've used the Guiding Assistant, but with moon rise being early I've wanted to take images before the sky washes out. Such is AP - always learning something!

[jazzin]

Yes I use SGP and I do the plate solve routine in it.

I've always done a goto alignment. Guess bc thats the first thing I learned and it always worked with SGP and the Plate Solve routine. I get the images through the framing and mosaic wizard from the UCAC catalogs and just frame them the way I want. Always worked for me that's why I do it this way. After my goto alignment I use the Hand Controller to slew to the object I want to image so it gets me close that way when I click run sequence, it doesn't have to slew far to frame the object.

Scared if I tried it without doing the goto alignment it might not work

[bladekeeper]

Yes I use SGP and I do the plate solve routine in it.

I've always done a goto alignment. Guess bc thats the first thing I learned and it always worked with SGP and the Plate Solve routine. I get the images through the framing and mosaic wizard from the UCAC catalogs and just frame them the way I want. Always worked for me that's why I do it this way. After my goto alignment I use the Hand Controller to slew to the object I want to image so it gets me close that way when I click run sequence, it doesn't have to slew far to frame the object.

Scared if I tried it without doing the goto alignment it might not work

While I don't use SGP, I do use NINA (a freeware sequencing software), and after I began plate solving, I've not done a goto alignment since.

Now, if I were to use my AVX for visual purposes, I'd do a goto alignment (if doing outreach), otherwise, plate solving takes care of that business nicely.

Congrats on your Pole Master, Scott! That sounds like a great addition to your rig!

[Star Dad]

Think I figured out what went wrong... After I plate solved, I then started PHD guiding - those 2500ms movements were probably the culprit as I let PHD guide too long before stopping it. 2 minutes of non-stop movement could easily account for the 2 degree shift. Currently waiting for Wednesday evening which is the next clear night.
I concur that plate solving has completely eliminated my goto alignment. For visual I don't even bother anymore either. Since I learned that my mount does not read the encoder data I just slew to a well known target - for me it's either Mizar of Jupiter or Saturn. If the scope is not pointed at the target I manually move the scope (physically - not using the controller) and from then on it's spot on for the rest of the night.

[jazzin]

Yes I use SGP and I do the plate solve routine in it.

I've always done a goto alignment. Guess bc thats the first thing I learned and it always worked with SGP and the Plate Solve routine. I get the images through the framing and mosaic wizard from the UCAC catalogs and just frame them the way I want. Always worked for me that's why I do it this way. After my goto alignment I use the Hand Controller to slew to the object I want to image so it gets me close that way when I click run sequence, it doesn't have to slew far to frame the object.

Scared if I tried it without doing the goto alignment it might not work

Congrats on your Pole Master, Scott! That sounds like a great addition to your rig!

Based on the numbers I got the other night during an imaging session, the polemaster looks like it might solve all my worries about Polar Alignment.

Still plan on doing my goto alignment. That's part of the fun of the process for me.

[Star Dad]

Had a GREAT clear night sky last night. I set my sights on getting the best tracking that I could. So, I started out with the Polemaster alignment. This being the third time using it, it went really well and quite quickly. Within about 5 minutes I had a "perfect" alignment. I fired up PHD and did a calibration. It whined a little - and at the end I may have hit the meridian, so I re did it. It whined again, but looking at the graph the dots were just about all spot on. Figured it was good. I took about 8 hours of images of various objects which I still have to process. But every one of them (except where PHD lost the guiding star) shows nice round stars. Instead of fiddling with looking through the polar scope on hands and knees in an awkward position and squinting with a blurry faint pole star for upwards of 30 minutes I was making images within 20 minutes - even with both PHD calibrations and the Polemaster. It is nice to have a stress free imaging session. I do think that perhaps there is still something wrong as I was seeing some rather large guiding pulses - between 2-3 pixels, whereas before it was usually 1-2 pixels. But after a while the PHD graph showed a consistent slow sinusoidal waveform (if you averaged out the peaks), clearly showing a slight wobble in the gear train of the mount. I can live with it. Consistent round stars are good!