Polar Scope Align Pro App to Help With Polar Alignment
Since I’ve started my foray into the wonderful world of DIY star tracking for astrophotography, the single most frustrating part of this endeavor has been polar alignment. It’s something that sounds really simple to do in theory – position your device so it aligns with the earth’s rotational axis. Not to mention in the Northern Hemisphere, we have a nice object in the sky to help in Polaris.
But as in life, the simple things always turn out to be way harder to do than they look. I’m burning precious imaging and testing time tweaking and tuning my polar alignment to get 60-second exposures. And I’m never quite sure if it’s my alignment or my tracker design that is leading to failed photos. I think I’ve found an app to help with this.
It Dawned on Me
I’ve been using a Celestron 5×24 finder scope secured with zip ties to my Lego Star Tracker. What’s to say that is even accurate enough to try to line up the true pole? Even a degree of misalignment here would make trying to polar align using this scope completely futile. Perhaps I need to find a way to calibrate the finder scope when mounted to my device.
Now, I’ve been compensating a little bit by trying to also roughly drift align. And the rough drift align never really left the pole in the right spot in the finder scope. I’m not opposed to drift aligning, however, my setup isn’t exactly easy to change shooting locations on the fly. So it’s tenuous at best.
At this stage, the most important thing for me to do is consistently align my device so I can generate consistent results. That will help me separate device issues from alignment issues.
Crap – Time to Spend a Little Money
I think the best thing to do at this point is to drop a couple of bucks and buy a tool to help me with my polar alignment. So I spent a whopping $2.99 on the Polar Scope Align Pro app in the Apple App Store. Add that cost to the Manfrotto ball head I previously acquired.
The reason I chose this app is that it has a daytime alignment function (which I can also use at night) that uses my iPhone to help position the device. I’m not holding my breath that this will be super-duper accurate, but what it should absolutely be is consistent. In fact, I’m counting on it. And I suppose $2.99 doesn’t really break the bank or the spirit of my intentions.
While this is the primary reason I went ahead and purchased this app, the pro version of this app comes loaded with a number of other features that I’m looking forward to using. It looks as though it consolidates a number of very useful tools and information that I would normally get by using several other apps. I like the idea of a one-stop shop for using an app in the field.
What’s Next
If the clouds ever roll out of Southern Poland, I’ll use this app to attempt to polar align my tracker. At the very least, it should show me how far off I was using the finder scope.
The only thing I need to do before my next trip outside will be to build a holder for the phone. It uses the top of the phone as its pointer, so I just need to line this up along the axis of the load arm. Easy enough to do. I’ll build the holder from … hmmm … Legos. Ok, so stay tuned for next testing update.