I am not sure how many times you run polemaster when doing your night's PA but I run it at least 3 times and I use a different start in the template when doing so. Also on the 3rd run, I will choose a template star that is the furthest from polaris.
I stumbled upon doing on a night when clouds started to roll in screwing up my view of the template stars. I would wait for the clouds to leave and run again. When I ran it the second time.....my thoughts were - it should be "spot on" (BTW, I chose the same star) but it wasn't. So I ran it the third time and chose the same star and it too was slightly off. I was about to lose my faith in Polemaster. So I ran it again and used a different star....I again had to make an adjustment. I ran it again - chose a different star and had to make even less....after the next run - no adjustment was needed. Since then, using both Atlas Pro, AVX, and Ioptron mounts - I have found that a 3 run routine - using different stars will get it pretty close. Close for me is when I can guide inside 1 arc minute, peak to peak. It is surely possible that a one star run will get you spot on....but more often than not, in my case - I need to run 2 or more times. Running it two more times takes the "I hope it is right" out of the equation.
Running the routine takes so little time - it is a no brainer for me and my equipment.
Thank you for that piece of advice.
I will certainly give this a try.
Jim
bwana
Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada
I find running PoleMaster through both the coarse and fine adjustment once is more than adequate for the imaging I do. But I'll test it a 2nd time just to see how it performs...
Like you say, it takes next to no time to run PoleMaster through its paces.
bwa
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