I can confirm that the bugs have been corrected, thanks for whoever was involved in fixing them.
I never experienced once the issue from last time, it took me about 1h30 to align. I wanted to take my time, no rush as the night was crystal clear.
I'm happy with this, I don't think I can get better.
And here's a 5 min shot unguided of Alkaid, taken straight after the alignment.
I've not tried this aspect of the software suite yet. Looks interesting. How long would it normally take? (I read over an hour?) but you were testing it I guess??
Is it like drift alignment? (Waiting for the drift?) I polar align my portable scope in 15 seconds with a pole scope. I align my permanent scope once a year in 3 minutes using a polemaster. Will this replace either one of those? I'd still have to be PRESENT at the mount for the adjustments correct?
AP Mach1 / CP4 APCC & PEMpro.
EXP SCI - ED152cf APO - Celestron 11" RASA - Stellarvue 80mm
Baader F2 HS NB filters, Lodestar X2 guide camera / OAG - ZWO 290mm mini
ZWO ASI1600MM Pro / ASI174M (solar) / ASI094MC
NEXDome, CLoudwatcher, AVX mount/ASIair and Stellarmate
The polar alignment procedure in Ekos is very similar to using a PoleMaster. With PoleMaster you need to manually match an image of the celestial pole with a predefined grid of stars. Ekos uses plate solving for this. It takes three images with the mount rotated differently and based on the plate solving results of those three images Ekos will show how good or bad your alignment is.
My two setups are mobile and for each it takes about 10 minutes to do the polar alignment.
It took me that long as I had just re-installed the mount in the box, and there is no way of looking through the polarscope for obvious reasons....
I would say that if you use your polarscope first to pre-align the mount, it should only take you 5 min or so using the assistant.
Ron: Its a very efficient procedure. 2-3 minutes per iteration for me. Am generally satisfied after 1-2 iterations.
I just use my guide scope at 280mm and routinely get >20sec accuracy within 10 minutes.
Traditional drift alignment would require a great deal more time to accomplish that.