Paul, on my compass I can set the magnetic deviation into the compass assembly (14 degrees in our case). The assembly has a rectangular base that you can sight down one of the sides. By standing back from the tripod and wedge 10 or 15 feet I can site down the side of the compass and determine its alignment with the wedge. If they are in a straight line of sight and the compass needle is pointing to the magnetic north as indicated on the compass face all is good. If not I reposition the tripod and continue until all is aligned. My wedge has 10 to 15 degrees of adjustment so If I start with that adjuster in the center of travel, reaching the final true polar alignments is quite easy.

Hope this was what you were looking for,

Cliff

Can anyone explain how to north align my scope using this info. I have all
the numbers but dont really know how to
put them into practise.

I have a compass with a rotating ring marked in degrees. I think I have to
twist this ring until it is offset by the magnetic
declination and then point the compass arrow to the now offset north, the
problem is I dont know whether to turn the ring
eastward or westward.

my declination (according to the site below) is 15d east (the meade manual
says 16d east)

I know this is probably second nature to many of you but I have had to mess
with maps or compasses before
and couldn't find much on google to help either.

thanks


-----Original Message-----
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2001 5:23 PM
Subject: [M]: Magenetic Declination web site.


For those interested (and particularly those who do not live in North
America and for whom the magnetic declination chart in the LX200 manual is
useless) here is a web site which provides magnetic declination values from
any latitude and longitude. There is also some interesting information on
the subsequent calculation of true bearings and other variables.

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/seg/gmag/fldsnth1.pl
<http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/seg/gmag/fldsnth1.pl>

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