To be entirely polar aligned there is a few things to do. First of all you must make sure you know your locations latitude. Mine is 47 degrees in the Seattle area. Your EQ mount (assuming that is what you have) has a alt/azimuth adjustment. This is the adjustment you need to do to align on the celestial North pole. Make sure the mount is level and use the alt/az ajustments to move up to your locations latitude. Then adjust the alt/az to the polaris area. Are you using a polar alignment scope? If so, it probably has a marker in the scope to help you align True north with Polaris is some fashion. On some EQ mounts the RA/DEC setting circles have a setup to help find CNP on any given year. Do you have that? If by chance that this is what you have done and you are at the CNP...then mark a star at the meridian and one in the east. You can try the drift method (too much to explain there) to accuratly determine your true north status. Also check your setting circles and make sure they aren`t sticking. You could be OK and your setting circles could be goofing up. Make sure they have smooth operation. I myself had the same problem when I realized what I was doing wrong. Remember that Polaris is around 2 hours RA and 89 degrees DEC. Every hour of real time equals 15 degrees in sidreal time. Helpful hint in case you didn`t know is that the full moon is 30 arc minutes or half of a degree. Good luck and I hope I helped a little. Try this link below for some help.

Polar Alignment 2 Star Method

• RA beats me - weatherlawyer - September 9, 2001 - 07:04 UTC
  • After a year.....?? - comet61 - September 9, 2001 - 10:54 UTC