PoleMaster - 2

The CQYCCD PoleMaster has been touted as providing a more accurate polar alignment than drift aligning - and much faster.

I used my new PoleMaster for the first time last night to put these claims to the test.

The PoleMaster is effectively a digital polarscope, sitting in front of the standard polarscope on the mount, but it can do much more. A standard polarscope is difficult to use - you have to kneel or sit behind it and crane your neck upwards to squint through it and find & recognise (in the case of the Southern Hemisphere) a few fifth magnitude stars.

My track record with polar aligning has not been good. I tried it on my Meade LX-90, a Polarie and a Star Adventurer with mixed results. Well, bad results if I'm being honest.

There are many methods of polar aligning, with varying degrees of accuracy, for use in the Southern Hemisphere but I would guess that the drift align method using PHD software was the most accurate. However, I found it frustratingly time consuming.

Then along came PoleMaster and it completely lived up to its expectations. 

CQYCCD Polemaster camera (with lens cap on), mounted in front of my EQ6-R polarscope.

On the first night out last night it took me a while to locate Sigma Octantis - it was initially just outside the camera's field of view. However, once located, it was a five minute job to use the software to polar align.

I was going to try the PHD Drift alignment graph to confirm the polar alignment accuracy but I skipped it and went straight to image testing using PHD guiding. The one minute exposures were successful.

Then two, then three then four minutes. All perfectly guided.

These were my two test images, taken in suburban moonlight:

2017-07-06 Omega Centauri 2x4min + 1x3 min 120mm 840mm f7 ISO 100-250 RP

2017-07-06 Centaurus A 3x4min ED120 840mm f7 ISO200 RP

I'm looking forward to my next dark sky site visit when the Moon disappears to try for some longer exposures.

I'll be taking my PoleMaster along!