On Thursday, June 21, 2001, at 09:07 AM, Michael A. Covington wrote:

> The reason not to align on planets is that their positions are not
> known (by
> the telescope) quite as precisely as the positions of the stars. The
> reason
> not to align on the Moon is that parallax affects it a *lot* -- your
> position on Earth affects where it appears in the sky.

But in both cases it knows the positions well enough (assuming you've
entered your lat/long) to do an alignment more accurate than the slop in
the bearings and gears.

> I don't see the point of one-star altazimuth alignment, myself. When,
> exactly, can you see one star and not see two even with telescopic
> aid? I
> predict that one-star alignment will go out of use in a few years. In
> polar
> mode, if polar alignment is known to be good, one star is of course
> sufficient.

I hope that in the future there is a multi-star alignment mode, somewhat
similar to T-Point, wherein it makes a map of the mount errors over the
various regions of the sky and compensates. Sort of like a permanent HP
mode. OK, I know that's easier said than done, but wouldn't that be
more fun for Meade's engineers than trying to figure out how to save
another nickel on the 60mm trash scopes? :-)

--
Bill Arnett
http://nineplanets.org/ 37 27 38 N 122 16 11 W

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