Hi All,

wondering if anyone can help tips to make things easier. I love the look of the Polar Alignment in Ekos but is it easy to do? I really struggled with it. I have a Celestron C5 with a 0.63 reducer and a Canon camera 450D on a Skywatcher EQM35. I appreciate the FOV is narrow but solving PA images are no problem and it does this and rotates the mount every time solves no issue.

My problem lies trying to get the star I choose in the target. No matter what polar alignment error I have I can't seem to make the star follow the line. So using 800 ISO or 1600 ISO on 5 second shutter speed I get to the point where I chose a star and calculate error option. I choose a bright star and it shows me the green/yellow/magenta triangle, but then as son as I press refresh on 2 seconds, for some reason the star i clicked on disappears and seems to show different star pattern on the next capture. If if i choose a big bright star (think i even selected Polaris once) as soon as I press refresh, the next capture comes and boom the star is gone. Could the mount be slightly moving from the moment of choosing a star to refresh the next capture? So at this point the star pattern as changed not to give up, I try to use another star in the FOV bearing in mind it is not on the corner of the triangle overlay anymore I could still sort of send it in the direction of the target roughly to get closer and retry the alignment process again in theory. Comes my next issue, even using another bright star i can't seem to follow it or make it move, it just seems to fall off the FOV, even if it tells me the direction to go say left 1 degree and up 1 degree, I don't even know which way right is on the adjustment knobs which way is left, I have a red dot finder So I have just been using that as a guide for right left up and down, sometimes it goes in the direction i want and sometimes it doesn't I'm just going off guesswork. I have managed to whittle the Polar alignment error to say 10 seconds on the declination and then maybe 30 seconds on the RA. and then I want just a little more which i try and then repeat the PA process again, then it goes to 4 degrees error, repeat the process now it's 7 degrees error, so i have completely gone the wrong way not knowing which direction is the right way. It took 4 hours last night to try and polar align and only stopping because my camera died because I was determined but I just packed up.

I know this all sounds really noobish, I just wonder if there is an easier way. is there some kind of live feed so it is easier to follow the star rather than 2 second refresh because things are changing too much on each refresh to follow easy.

Thanks for reading

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