If you plan on doing photography, there is NO substitute for drift
alignment. There are several methods to get close, but you still have to
drift align from there. I use a polar finder scope to get close then drift
align in about 10 to 15 minutes. Most of that time is waiting to see if
there is any drift. If I don't see any drift in 2 to 5 minutes I'm happy.

Blair



----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, May 14, 2001 5:04 PM
Subject: [M]: Iteration oscillation


> Last night I tried my hand at the iteration technique
> for polar alignment. I digested all the MAPUG topics
> on this subject and iterated using pollux (which was
> reccomended because it does not have an RA near
> polaris or polaris+12h.)
>
> I was using meade's 12mm recticle and could not get
> successive iterations that put polaris and pollux any
> closer that about 1/3 the radius of the eypiece from
> the center. Also, while slewing to m13 it wasn't in my
> 12mm Nagler, which means that whole sky accuracy was
> somewhat worse.
>
> Is this what I should expect? Is the remaining error
> mechanical?
>
> On another note, how closely related are pointing
> accuracy and tracking accuracy? Since I'm trying to
> increase exposure time, I'm willing to suffer a little
> bit on pointing if tracking is still extremly
> accurate.
>
> Any reccomendations other than "use the drift method
> instead"?
>
> John
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices
> http://auctions.yahoo.com/
>
>

View index by [date] [author] [subject]
Previous message: [M]: Re: Iteration oscillation, Michael A. Covington
Next message: Re: [M]: Pictor autofocus feature - any good ?, Ralph P. Pass III
Previous message in thread: [M]: Re: Iteration oscillation, Michael A. Covington