MaxPoint software ...

Anthony - I' d be fairly sure that Maxpoint will include reporting data regarding polar alignment.

Dave,

I know I have very good polar alignment but someone on the AP-GTO Yahoo group reported some incredible results for his polar alignment and I would like to see how close I am right now and how much better I can get.

As Eamonn says, T-Point is a more complex beast altogether. And you need TheSky 6 (I believe).

I feel fairly comfortable (famous last words) about orthogonality etc and the GOTO accuracy of my mount is very good (it gets all of my DSO targets on the imaging chip). As a result, I am not convinced I need any of the fancy features the software is purported to provide. Again, it may be a simple case of my being ignorant!

One other noteworthy point - the folks at DL are petty good at extending the trial period if you ask nicely and explain local weather conditions

Thanks for the tip, bud!

As for AP -if you 'altered' the Starfire, all that would happen is you'd go back on the waitlist for another 10 years... Or buy a new available one for twice the price (and AP get none of it...). I think I'll put the angle grinder away

The insurance policy for the house includes a generous amount for both the refractor and mount. In fact, I have specified the premium pricing I would have to pay for an immediate replacement. Of course, I just hope it never comes to something like that.

Anthony.

Anthony,

Dave is right about the reporting data for MaxPoint. However, a much easier route to precise pole alignment is to use PAM (PoleAlignMax). This provides an accurate solution within a few minutes, assuming you have near polar alignment. This is a freeware.

By using Maxim DL with the MaxPoint (pointing corrector) through The Sky or Starry Nights, the pointing corrector will provide accuracy to at least 1 arc min. However, this is much of a 'trial an error job' which really will take a long time to achieve. Hence my suggestion of going the PAM route specifically for polar alignment as a once off job.

I have used CCD Soft but not with MaxPoint because the Orchastrate suite of software included T Point from Bisque. You can still use PAM with the CCD Soft.

I hope this solution is sufficient.

Eamonn A

For accurate polar alignment , I found

wcs.ruthner.at/index-en.htm

to be very good. It takes a little getting used to but once the penny drops, fast accurate alignment becomes a snip.

Forgot about PAM Eamonn!

Anthony - do a drift align so you get no drift for five minutes in South and East (or West if that's a better location for you), then tweak with PAM.

I'm not sure how your mount is mounted - portable pier or permanent fixed concrete pillar. I use the portable pier (in permanent mode ) and I find that making sure the mount is reasonable level certainly improves matters. A carpenter's level will do the trick.

I can drift align to the point where I get no trailing for 10 minutes - that's without PAM. With PAM, who knows- I've not tried it yet.

Do you have the heavy duty alt-az adjuster and do you have the rotating pier adapter? They'll help a lot.

Cheers

Dave

Hi Dave,

I picked up the 54" pier with the 1200RPA rotating pier adapter. In fact, the 1200RPA was responsible for a 30-day delay in the shipment of my mount from AP since it was the only item out of stock at the time my mount was ready for shipment.

Anyway, using the classical two-star drift method and a 12.5" illuminated reticle, I can have the reference star stay fixed for 30 minutes when looking due south (0 declination) and/or due east (15 degrees or so altitude). In fact, this is the reason that I spent the first three (full) evenings finetuning my polar alignment since I had the 30-min criteria for no visible drift in my reference star.

However, when I read on the AP-GTO group that a fellow had managed to get within 2 arc-secs of the north celestial pole (!!!!), that is when I started to entertain a different approach to finetuning my polar alignment. Furthermore, this particular fellow made specific mention of MaxPoint in his quest for such a fine polar alignment and, hence, for my initial question.

Although I doubt his claim of being within 2 arc-secs of the pole (the seeing alone should vary by that amount on its own), I am quite attracted to the idea of trying to improve my initial two-star drift menthod further. Since we are approaching a new moon, this would be a great time to finetune my polar alignment, no matter how little or great the additional improvement is going to be, so that I will up and running immediately thereafter.

I apologize for not being this descriptive in my initial posting.

Anthony.

PS. I have downloaded and installed PoleAlignMax. I hope to sit down at some point over the next 2-3 evenings to have a first go at it. For plate solving, do I need any external stellar databases? I do have TheSky but it is somewhat outdated (it is Version 4 and it came with my SBIG CCD camera).