How do you polar align a German Equatorial mount?

Question

I just purchased and am trying to align my LXD-75 8" SCT.

Answer 1

For visual observing, an approximate alignment will be good enough. Set the altitude adjustment to your latitude, then position the mount so its polar axis is pointing roughly north. That's it! If you have Autostar, there's an automatic alignment procedure, see the manual - link below.

You can use the polar alignment viewfinder to do a more precise alignment, but that's only needed for photography.

Answer 2

If the mount is aligned good on Polaris and pointing on the objective merchandise, all you are able to desire to could desire to do is pass the mount in impressive ascension to stick to the objective. If it extremely isn't any longer working, then the mount isn't good aligned. The "numbers" are on the placing circles. On maximum equatorial mounts those placing circles are too small and erroneous to be of any use to find gadgets. maximum novice astronomers forget approximately those placing circles and discover gadgets utilising the telescope's finder scope with a technique called starhopping. For distinctive instructions on aligning and utilising an equatorial mount, and on starhopping, I notably recommend the outdoor Astronomer's instruction manual by Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer (Firefly).

Answer 3

Hi. Meade and Celestron and all the others use the same technique. Here is a link to one site: http://www.celestron.com/c2/esupport/index.php?_a=knowledgebase&_j=subcat&_i=9
In general, you want to get the rotational axis lined up with the North Celestial Pole, about 9/10ths of a degree from Polaris. Sighting ON Polaris is close enough for all but the most critical work.

Answer 4

Would this help?
http://www.celestron.com/c2/esupport/index.php?_a=knowledgebase&_j=questiondetails&_i=66&nav=+%26gt%3B+%3Ca+href%3D%27index.php%3F_a%3Dknowledgebase%26_j%3Dsubcat%26_i%3D9%27+class%3D%27lkHdrBlk9%27%3EPolar+Alignment+How-To%3C%2Fa%3E