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That was really GREAT Charlie,Wonderful actually,I wonder if there is a way to print it off,to have it help me walk thru it the first few times.The thing is, I do have a fork mount on a heavy duty wedge, I have an Ultima 8 pec (celestron)do you know the scope? I made my own altitude and azimuth fine controls for the wedge,and can't wait to try them, but it is still snowing out.
How fine are the reticle lines in kc3ccdtools,would they be like the reticle in a 12mm eyepiece? Would you be able to use the reticle to guide with? I am hoping to find a way to use a webcam to watch the guide star on a laptop and use the hand control, I think this would be much easier on my body, (not quite as flexible anymore)

Thanks Lawrie

Thanks again
Lawrie

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It was my pleasure. FYI, while I'm sure that you could use the recticle to easily guide well enough to do piggyback photography on your scope, K3 can autoguide - you might want to look into that. You should be able to print this right off the website - if that doesn't work let me know and I'll attach a copy in a text file of some kind to the forum message for you.


Charlie

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Charlie,

That is a very nice tutorial, thanks! Can you clarify this:

"Now, looking at the body of your mount, move the scope in DEC toward the south (the rear of the mount) so that your scope and the mount look something like a "T" laying on its side (if you look at the scope and mount from the side). This points your scope roughly at the celestial equator.
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How far south do you rotate the dec? Equal to your latitude? For example, when it is pointing straight up, that is 90 degrees dec. Here in Fort Lauderdale, our Lat is around 26 degrees. Do I rotate it to the south 26 degrees from the current 90, which is 64 degrees?

Perhaps I am way off base, but I've performed drift alignment before which seemed to work, and I did not rotate the Dec axis to the south.

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The whole idea of using the "T" example is to just create a sort of word picture to get you to think of where the *best* position to take your measurement is at.

Think of a letter "T" cut out of a piece of wood. Instead of standing the "T" upright, you lay it down on one side so that the "T" is resting on the left edge of its bottom and also the left edge of the top "flat" part of the "T". The flat "top" of the "T" angles backward, and the upright part of the "T" is now on an angle.

That angle corresponds to the RA axis of your mount (viewed from the left side), which is pointing at the North Celestial Pole (or thereabouts). You want the scope to point at a spot that's somewhere close to 90 degrees offset from that angle (which corresponds to your latitude, by the way), along the meridian line, which is a line going from north to south directly over your head. That exact spot is known as the celestial equator.

You may or may not have the exact numbers right - it's not a critical measurement at all as long as you're close. It could very well work with the scope pointed straight up - or even quite a bit farther south than the celestial equator - the errors will just show up quicker the closer you can get to a spot on the meridan at the celestial equator, that's all.

Charlie

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I'm having a difficult time visualizing the 'T', so doing it by the numbers works better for me.

When I can sight through my polar scope and see Polaris, then the altitude of the mount is set to my latitude, 26 degrees. When I put the counter weight bar, better known as the DEC axis, pointing straight sideways, and point the OTA straight up, the DEC setting circle reads 64, which is 90 degrees minus my latitude of 26 degrees. I then rotate the OTA to the south until the DEC setting circle reads 90 degrees, exactly 26 degrees of the vertical because my mount is elevated 26 degrees off the horizontal. At this point it is pointing at the Celestial Equator to the south, which is exactly 90 degrees from the North Celestial Pole.

I believe this to be correct, and one other way to correctly locate the intersection of Celestial Equator and the Meridian. Please feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken, this post is simply my attempt to further clarify the whole thing.

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Don't give it a second thought,you have it exactly right! Your scope should be exactly square to the angle of the RA axis... kind of like this very rough drawing...

Charlie

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