Whoopee! Polar alignment using SharpCap and the Sun!

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My regular readers will know how inaccurate are my Goto slews. So I was desperately searching for a daytime mounting alignment system for a site where Polaris is never available.

Moreover, I have no polar alignment telescope nor guide camera. Though I am aware the AWR system has a guide port and my ZWO can be used as a guide camera.

This video is just what I was looking for. I spend hours gently compensating for drift while capturing solar videos for later processing. AWR has two stages of slow motion guiding as well as the usual, "high speed" slew.

Though we won't dwell on its actual slew speed in reality. I was shocked to see a Skywatcher mounting swinging a 12" Newtonian around the sky! My slew speed is almost glacial in comparison. With a 90° slew literally measured in minutes. The Guide and Center speeds are slow enough to be ideal when dealing with several meters of focal length, on a small sensor camera, projecting onto a large monitor screen. As I have intimated in the recent past the sun's image must be six feet, or more, across.

I had hoped to use the "top" of the sun to improve my big, DIY, mounting's alignment but seemed to be suffering from solar image rotation as well as obvious drift.

Cue the sun for some [REAL] alignment fun and games? Oh no! Wall to wall cloud, gales and days of rain forecast. Grr! Ah, well. I shall just have to rehearse by watching the video several times until the details sink in. I have already purchased the SharpCap Pro License. £10 Sterling per year as of October 2019 is great value.

The license key is sent automatically on purchase and backed up by email. The license key allows the private user to add it to several PCs or laptops for their own use. Business or professional users must buy a separate license for each PC. The Pro version of SharpCap provides a range of advanced facilities under Tools on the top menu. It now occurs to me that there is no need for the Pro license for the test in the video. Only the circle and crosshairs is needed to monitor the movement of the sun's image on the screen.



More on this later. Meanwhile I can be designing and building a mounting baseplate, azimuth adjuster. I usually just use a four foot long scaffolding pole, a 2m aluminium, straight edge and a compass. I kid you not! Stop sniggering at the back! There is some point to my madness.

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