polar alignment training

After awesome Italian food, I trained Manuel on performing a proper polar alignment with his Orion Atlas EQ-G mount. I had prepared extensively and was ready to be assertive. It went well and I think he grew to appreciate the number of steps required and the time it takes, particularly if he wants to do imaging.

We set up in the parkette beside his home.

I started off by reviewing and checking a few things. We made sure we had the correct location numbers for the hand controller. I talked about the "levels" of accuracy. I reminded him where the North Celestial Pole is and that it is constantly moving. Verified he had the latest version of the hand controller firmware.

I discussed preliminary day-time steps such as verifying that the polar scope was focused for stars and that the polar scope itself was in alignment with the mount. The cone error should be checked (he's never done it). I suggested we assume these things were OK for now.

Then I walked him, in detail, through all the normal steps. And at various stages, I got him to practice.

1. prepared tripod
   • stablised
   • leveled
   • latitude set roughly
   • polar alignment set roughly (Polaris in polar scope)
2. prepared polar scope
   • secured in mount
   • mount rotated to expose openings
   • mount powered to illuminate reticule
   • reticule focused
3. aligned on NCP
   • constellation orientation and NCP position double checked in software
   • reticule accurately rotated (by turning the mount in RA) to match constellation orientation
   • RA axis carefully locked
   • Polaris put in little circle (by adjusting mount altitude/latitude and azimuth controls)
4. telescope mounted and balanced
5. polar alignment double checked (after mount is loaded up)
6. drift alignment performed
   • diagonal installed as per usual
   • illuminated eyepiece installed (with Barlow) to yield approx. 200x
   • N, S, E, W determined
   • star in south near meridian and equator selected and centred
   • reticule adjusted to be parallel to RA and Dec
   • drift in declination adjusted out with azimuth controls: if star drifts south, polar axis is too far east; else too far west
   • star in east near equator selected and centred
   • reticule adjusted to be parallel to RA and Dec
   • drift in declination adjusted out with altitude/latitude controls: if star drifts south, polar axis is too low; else too high
7. Pointing Accuracy Enhancement (PAE) performed, if nec.
8. Periodic Error Correction (PEC) training performed, if nec.

I don't how exactly, without taking any notes, but he said it got it.

We used his Meade dual-line reticule 12mm modified astrometric (Kellner) eyepiece with the cheapo stock Celestron 1¼" star diagonal. We didn't need his Celestron 2x Ultima SV barlow as we were already near 200 power. It turned out that we pretty well nailed the polar alignment with the onboard polar scope. We had very minor drifting.