3 best stars to align on

[Mirrorgirl]

Hi guys

Can someone let me no the best 3 stars to align on..I would be very grateful

Rhoda

[KathyNS]

They will change during the year as the sky revolves. You want two in the east and one in the west, or vice versa.

[AstroBee]

That's really going to change depending on the time of year as the constellations progress westward about 4 minutes each night.
It also depends on your view of the sky, if a particular direction is blocked. For me, My view to the east at my home is COMPLETELY blocked by my house. Assuming you have a full 180° view, you want to pick a bright star in the north-east, east, and south-east or north-west, west, or south-west depending on which side of the meridian you are on.
For right now, on the east side of the meridian, I would pick Alderamin in Cepheus, Sadr in Cygnus, and Altair in Aquila.
On the west side I would pick Alkaid in Ursa Major, Arcturus in Bootes, and Antares in Scorpius.
If you are using a mount that has a 3-star alignment routine it is usually very good at picking the best stars for you as long as the time and date in the controller are correct.

EDIT: Or, as Kathy mentioned, choose 2 on one side and one on the other. I've never really had any issues picking three on the same side of the meridian on the rare occasions that I've done it manually. As I mentioned above, my two-story home completely blocks my view to the east except for about 10°.

[Lady Fraktor]

Here is the Skywatcher list of named alignment stars with constellation charts.

SkyScan_Alignment_Stars.pdf

(2.19 MiB) Downloaded 48 times

[Greenman]

Here is the Skywatcher list of named alignment stars with constellation charts.

SkyScan_Alignment_Stars.pdf

This is useful as stars that look bright to you may not be in the data base (as I found out on my Celestron SE6!).

[Richard]

Ok Rhoda you are trying to align an EQ mount , in your other post you mentioned that you have polar aligned it before setting up , I am no expert but if you let us know how you did it we can help a lot more , an eq mount is so much harder that the SE mount

[Gfamily]

You could try downloading the Synscan Pro App (for free) and use that app's suggestions for alignment stars - as others have said, these would vary depending on your location and date/time.

Then, for your alignment, take the App's #1 options for each of the three stars.
Just my suggestion.

[JayTee]

This post will be better served on this forum. Other beginners could benefit from the answers generated by the response to the op