I had been using the Ekos Polar Alignment tool for a month or so - but after making the adjustments I would look back in the built-in polar scope (CEM25p) and Polaris would be substantially away from where it is supposed to be for my location and the date/time. It should be at about 38.8 degrees, but it wound up nearly halfway between the 45-degree circle and the 60-degree circle. At first I suspected the polar scope was not correctly aligned to the RA axis. But if I center Polaris in the polar scope, it does not move as I rotate in RA. This was very consistent over several sessions and repeats of the polar align routine within a session.

So last night I made myself learn PHD2 drift align.I polar aligned just with the polar scope, then drift aligned. Only small tweaks were needed, and looking back to the polar scope it was about where I had put it (and I probably learned better exactly where 38.8 degrees is relative to the 40 degree circle). Then I ran the ekos polar-rotation polar align routine and, sure enough, it told me I was some 12 degrees off. I took a screenshot, but forgot and copied something else to the clipboard before I saved it, so you'll have to take my word for now.

Could that be caused by misalignment of guide scope? I *think* my guide scope points at pretty much the same place as my main scope (have not double-checked recently, but I haven't made any changes or even dismounted it since I aligned it to the main scope). I'm planning to remount the guide scope in a completely different way very soon anyway (to help with dec balancing).

Image scale parameters for the solver are all correct for my guide scope / camera.

Thanks for the report.

Can you say which version of KStars you're using? Is it a recent release, or is it the "latest software" post release?
I have made substantial changes to the Polar Alignment system since the 3.5.1 release
e.g. see indilib.org/forum/general/8602-new-polar....html?start=84#66910
so if you're using software from before that change (which is not in any official release), you may want to try the latest code.
If you're using my new version, I'd like to see a log. Can you provide a log with align debugging enabled?

On way to find out if you're not sure is to look at the main KStars SkyMap, and click "Help" --> "About KStars".
If it looks something like the image below (saying 3.5.2 Beta) then you may be using my new software,
if it says something like 3.5.1 or previous, you're not.

To answer your specific question, if you're using the new PA version, then it wouldn't matter if the scope you were using to capture the
PAA alignment images was aligned with your imaging scope or not, as long as they shared the same RA axis.
With the previous software, it probably wouldn't matter if they were a little off, but probably would matter if they were, e.g. 12 degrees off.



Thanks,
Hy

Thank you Hy. (I meant to ask if there is a specific align log checkbox, thanks for answering the question I forgot to include).

I use astroberry, which (as of yesterday, anyway) is still at KStars 3.5.0 Guess at some point I am going to have to start updating without waiting on astroberry to catch up. Once I get to the new version of the align module I will check it again.