>I have a question about initial alignment. I think 'The Book' says
>that I should start by placing the control panel on the north side of
>the mount and then level the tube facing north. Then I did a 2 star
>alignment and it tracked really great. The first night I just started
>off by aligning on Vega and Arcturus and it seemed the tracking wasn't
>as acurate.

All this pertains to Alt-Az:

For a "no star" alignment, you start out with the base level and the tube level and facing south. If these are accurately set, the scope is aligned as soon as it powers up, since those are the assumptions it makes when it boots. This is how you can get set up in the daytime... the alignment is usually accurate enough to find a very bright object in the finder (such as Venus) and sync on it to get very good daytime alignments.

For a one star alignment, you only need the base to be exactly level. The initial OTA orientation makes no difference. You then do a GOTO any object, move the tube manually or electrically to center that object, SYNC on it, and you should be pretty well aligned. I do one star alignments all the time using just the bubble level in the base and get surprisingly good alignments.

For a two star alignment, it is supposedly not necessary to level anything and the tube does not need to be in any particular orientation on power up. However, I believe the scope actually begins tracking (as if you were doing a one star alignment) when you center star #1 and press ENTER so that it can compensate for the movement of the sky while you locate star #2. Since the scope is attempting to track at this point, being level can help the scope correct for sky motion in between centering star #1 and star #2 and improve the alignment accuracy.


Paul Goelz
Rochester Hills, MI
pgoelz at eaglequest dot com
Videoastronomy, model helicopter and music (UnFest) web site:
http://www.eaglequest.com/~pgoelz

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