I’m new to automated telescope control, as I’m trying to get into Astrophotography. I have a HEQ5 mount, Skywatcher f5 6” Newtonian scope, and asi120mm mini on a guide scope. I’m using Astroberry running Kstars/Ekos and trying to use the polar alignment routines to align to the South Celestial Pole.
Last night was my first time trying it out. I watched Jasem’s 2017 youtube video on the process, which seemed pretty straightforward, but after 3 hours of just getting worse and worse alignment each iteration, I finally realised that the correction vector generated was in the wrong direction. Instead of placing the star at the end of the vector, and adjusting until it was in the cross-hair, which is what is shown in the youtube video, I had to put the star in the crosshair, and move it to the end if the vector.
Does this have something to do with me aligning to the south celestial pole? Is there a setting somewhere I should set to flip the vector, or is something else happening?
This was reported as well for northern hemisphere. I'm still not sure what causes it. Someone way smarter than me needs to check the math. At any rate, I made it flip the correction vector now in the southern hemisphere, so check if that helps. The change should be in KStars nightly.
Thanks. I’ll just have to figure out how to install the nightly builds first I’m also getting a ZWO EAF in a few days too, and saw there was a patch for a problem with that too, so I do need to figure it out.
*edit*
Right, I think I’ve got the latest build. I’ll try it out tonight when it gets dark.
Well I think that fixed it. My placement was so close I didn’t have much vector to test with. However, the build was just too slow/hanging to continue using on my Pi, so I’m going to change to running the client on OSX and use Indi server on the Pi for now.
I have been using the LEGACY Polar Alignment routine, as I live right on the equator and can't see either pole. My dark site is located at 00 degrees, 30 minutes South. I have found that I have to read the alignment adjustments as if my mount is pointing north, even though in reality I am pointing to the south. So I have to reverse the directions too. It seems the software does not take not consideration a mount pointing at he South Pole, even though it knows out is located in the Southern Hemisphere.