Yes, that would do alright then. Sorry I didn't catch your intent in your
original post.

Are you sure 90 is really 90 on your Dec? Do your mechanical alignment the
way you describe, then just adjust your Dec a bit one way or the other from
90 instead of doing the tube position changes. See if that brings Polaris to
a point instead of circling. Your DEC ring might be off it's mark. There
are notes in the archives about how to fix this if you haven't checked for
it already.

Anthony J. Kroes
Green Bay, WI


> -----Original Message-----
> High Desert
> Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2001 11:08 AM
> Subject: Re: [M]: RE: Orthoganality, yet again..
>
>
> Yes, I am aware that Polaris is not at the celestial north. What
> I did to
> get around this was to mechanically align the wedge to Polaris, vs the
> celestial pole. I did this with power off to the scope, Dec set
> at 90. I
> kept the power off and did not hook any of the cables up on the
> LX-200, that
> way I could spin the RA without worrying about unwrapping the Dec motor
> cable.
>
> I figured that with the wedge aligned to center on Polaris instead of the
> celestial pole that the apparent motion of Polaris would be
> small. I could
> probably get away with about 30 minutes or so before I should see
> any motion
> of Polaris, and my spinning test are very quick, so motion should
> not be an
> issue.
>
> So my scope ends up not "polar aligned" but instead "Polaris
> aligned". This
> would not be a good situation under normal condition, but should work for
> this quick test.
>
> Darrell
>
>
> >Darrel,
> >
> >As the coordinates of Polaris are NOT at 90 Dec (they are Dec
> +89 15 50.8
> >RA
> >02 31 49.08), this is where your 'spinning Polaris' theory
> fails. Polaris
> >is offset from the true pole by 3/4 of a degree, and though the Lx200
> >electronics tell you to point there as if it were the pole when aligning,
> >there is a bit of correcting in the inside to compensate for the offset.
> >
> >A scope truly 'polar aligned' does not point to Polaris, but to
> a point at
> >90 Dec and any RA you want (because they all converge at a point
> there).
> >If
> >you are properly aligned, and set the scope to 90 Dec and spin
> it around as
> >you describe, Polaris should circle the pole point also because
> it does not
> >sit on that point. Because Polaris is 3/4 degree away from this
> point, you
> >need a pretty wide field of view to watch it circle (over 1.5 degrees).
> >
> >While further alignment and othoganality issues may be present in your
> >setup, the fact that Polaris is not spinning quietly upon itself is not a
> >positive indication that this is so.
> >
> >Hope this helps, (and if I am mistaken in my explanation, someone please
> >correct me!)
> >
> >Anthony J. Kroes
> >Green Bay, WI
> _________________________________________________________________
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>

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