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A new device by QHY for polar aligning an equatorial mounted telescope.
After nine years using my Alt-Az mounted LX-90 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope, I was beginning to feel that I had taken it as far as I could - and that to improve my meagre attempts at astrophotography I would need to buy a wider field telescope with an equatorial mount.
I bought a Skywatcher ED120 refractor with a Skywatcher EQ6-R equatorial mount.
I was very happy with the purchase but I knew from my previous experience of trying to polar align the LX-90 in equatorial mode that I would probably need to allocate several months to mastering two things: polar aligning the mount and using a guide-scope. I decided to take it slowly and concentrate first on polar aligning and worry about the guiding afterwards.
After a few attempts at polar aligning using drift aligning with PHD - with some dubious results - I concluded that it might take even longer than I hoped
Then I saw the new PoleMaster from QHY - and this video in particular from ASTRONZ in New Zealand, demonstrating how to polar align very accurately (especially in the Southern Hemisphere) - and only spend a few minutes doing so:
I watched it a dozen times and I ordered one, which arrived yesterday from Gama Electronics - the sole distributor in Australia.
PoleMaster works by sitting a CCD camera in place of the polar-scope. There are several steps to be taken when using the software but essentially it achieves three things:
1. determines the location of the South Celestial Pole on the 11° x 8° live image.
2. determines the centre of axial rotation (of the mount) on the same image.
3. directs you to move the alt-az bolts until the two centres coincide on the screen.
Here it is, fitted to my EQ6:
The claim is not only that it is much faster than drift aligning - but that it also achieves an accuracy down to 30 arc-seconds.