This simple guide helps you polar align your Celestron equatorial mount when you have no view of the north star.

Some things that will be helpful for this tutorial:

• A bubble level
• The iPhone app Astro Locator
• The iPhone app Sky Safari
• An eye piece with an illuminated crosshair, or attached camera with software that will put a crosshair on the display.

Steps to align:

1. The first thing you’ll need to do is set up your mount on level ground facing roughly north. Make sure you use a bubble level to ensure your mount is on a flat plane so that when it’s rotating around it’s azimuth the mount is not moving up and down slightly.
2. It’s important you’re facing north within a few degrees, you can achieve this by using your phone’s compass feature (or Astro Locator) and laying it across the main telescope tube on a flat surface. You’ll want the phones settings set to face true north. This is already established in Astro Locator.
3. Turn on your mount, and plug in your home site settings or let your GPS system update your time and location in the mount’s hand controller. I currently use a GPS, but prior to that I would watch the clock in Astro Locator, and set the time setting down to the second for accuracy.
4. Use your mount’s hand controller to select 2-star alignment. It’s going to show you the name of a suggested star in the western hemisphere that it thinks is visible in your location. Since your mount is pointed roughly north, west is going to be anything directly to the left of your mount, and east will be anything directly right of your mount. The star it suggests might not be visible to you depending on your location and any objects that might be in the way (like houses or trees). This is where Sky Safari comes in handy. I open it up on the iPhone, zoom out so that I can see a fairly large portion of the sky, and press compass (one of the buttons on the bottom of the app). This allows you to pan your phone around the sky, and look for stars that you can actually see. Typically, the named stars in Sky Safari, are only the brightest stars, and you should now be able to visually identify stars in your night sky. Look for a bright star to the left of your mount, and correlate it to a named star in Sky Safari. Once you have a star picked out, use the up and down arrows on your telescope’s hand control to scroll alphabetically through the list of named stars until you find the one you’re looking at. Press enter on the hand set and the mount will now move to the first star.
5. If you’ve set the time, location, and position of your mount properly, you should now see the star within the mount’s field of view either through your finder scope, eyepiece, or camera video. (TIP: Here’s a shortcut to improve the initial setup. Once you’ve aimed at your first star, but before aligning it in the crosshairs with the hand controller, use your mounts manual azimuth and altitude adjustments (the physical knobs) to move the star inside the crosshairs. Once done, you can then use the hand control to align the star, and you will not need to use the arrow keys to move the mount around in this step. All this does is improve the GOTO of the alignment stars during this alignment process. Using the mount’s hand control, follow the directions on screen to center the star in your crosshairs. Accuracy is important here. You want to get the star as centered as possible. Press ‘align’, and then a suggestion for star two should show up.
6. Repeat the process for a second star in the western hemisphere. Find a second visible star using Sky Safari, then select the name in the mount’s hand controller to move to that star and align it centered in your crosshairs.
7. You will now be prompted to add up to 4 additional calibration stars from the mount’s hand controller. These will all be in the eastern hemisphere, and you’ll want to continue repeating the process for all four of these stars.
8. Your telescope now has a an accurate GOTO pointing model stored in it’s system for your specific night sky. The 2+4 alignment process you just finished is not the polar alignment, but the pointing model for the GOTO system. For visual observers you’re set now, and can stop following the tutorial here. If you intend to do imaging, the next steps will cover the polar alignment process to dial in that last bit of precision for long exposure imaging.
9. Press ‘Align’ on the hand controller, and use the arrow keys to select ‘Polar Align’.
10. Use the scroll arrow keys to move to and select ‘display align’. This will show you (with a reasonable degree of accuracy) how close you are aligned to polar north. An error less than 00 10’ 00’’ is fairly good, but you want to get as close to 00 00’ 00” as possible, especially if your telescope is a long focal length or you expect to use really long exposures. Now use the back button, and select Align under Polar Align.
11. You’ll be asked to align your mount to the last star you were pointing at. If this star does not match the criteria required for Polar Alignment, you’ll get an error message saying this star isn’t appropriate, and to pick another star. If you get that error, you need to back out of the Polar Align menu to the home screen where it says ‘ready’, select ‘Stars’ on the hand control, and scroll to ‘Named Stars’. Using Sky Safari, you need to locate a bright star near the horizon, as close to north as you can find, then select it in the hand controller and move the mount to that star.
12. Now, press ‘back’ on the hand controller to get you back to the controller home screen, select ‘align’, ‘polar align’ and this will now start the polar alignment process. The scope will now goto the star you’re already pointing at, and it will ask you to center it in your crosshairs. Once you’ve pressed align, it’s going to move once more to that same star, but this time you’ll see it’s not centered again, the scope is now pointing to where it thinks the star should be if your mount is perfectly aligned. The hand controller is going to ask you to now use your manual altitude and azimuth physical mount knobs to re-center the star. Once complete, you’ll press ‘Align’ again. Select ‘Display Align’ to check how close to 00 00’ 00” you are now. Assuming you are at 0 or even a few arc seconds of error, you are close enough to 0 to move on to setting up your guiding software and pick your first target of the evening. If you want to try getting to 0 error, you can repeat the polar alignment part of this process.

Great news for Mac OS users! Now your favourite electronic polar alignment camera works natively in Mac OS. You need to connect the usb cable before running the PoleMaster software in Mac OS 2. After clicking connect in the software will take a few seconds during the first time you plug in the camera and running the PoleMaster software. Advanced GoTo by Alt/Az offset to use the AstroTortilla polar alignment routine. PHD2/PHD Auto-Dithering, exposure Auto-Canceling and real-time monitoring of the distance to the guide star. MetaGuide Auto-Dithering. AstroArt Auto-Dithering. Lacerta MGen Auto-Dithering, exposure Auto-Canceling and real-time monitoring of the distance to the.

This is quick guide to Simple Polar Alignment with an equatorial mount. Its designed only to get rough polar alignment suitable for observing.

Newcomers to astronomy are quite often easily put off from equatorial mounts by being told they are complex to set up and use. My own personal experience is that they are no more difficult to manage than a standard alt-azimuth and have the advantage that when polar aligned they make life easier when your observing as you have only one control to handle to keep the telescope pointed at an object.
Beginners are often frightened by the idea of ‘Polar Alignment’ as it can seem quite complex. Its actually fairly easy. This guide will talk you through a rough Polar Alignment that will be easily good enough for observing with. If you want a more accurate alignment for astro-photography then you could start with my guide for aligning the HEQ5 which will give a more precise alignment. for full on accuracy you will need to carry out a star drift test. That isn’t covered in either of my guides as I don’t need that level of accuracy for observation.
Before you start the guide it may be useful for you to familiarise yourself with an equatorial mount. You can see a fairly simple equatorial mount with its main components listed by selecting the “A Simple Equatorial Mount – Labelled” tab to the left (or above if on a browser)

Shown above is a simple equatorial mount. This is a Sky-Watcher supplied EQ-2 but most equatorial mounts are very similar in basic design.

As the earth rotates the stars appear to cartwheel through the sky above. By aligning the telescope to a fixed point in the sky which isn’t moving allows you to track objects using only the Right Ascension control. The Right Ascension movement compensates for the earths movement and allows the telescope to ‘track’ an object. The part of the sky which doesn’t move is of course the North Celestial Pole ( if your in the Northern hemisphere ) which is rather like a hub around which the stars appear to rotate.
Polar alignment is simply the process by which we aim the telescope at the NCP. In fact in this guide we wont be aiming at the NCP we’ll aim at the Pole Star – Polaris. Luckily in the Northern Hemisphere Polaris is very close to the NCP and provides a good enough ‘fix’ for observing.

The basic aim of Polar Alignment is to align the telescope mounts Right Ascension (RA) axis to Polaris.

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This picture shows the RA Axis of a standard equatorial mount and the motion the axis operates in. This is in the same plane as the one in which the stars appear to move.

The simplest method of polar alignment is simply to aim the RA axis at Polaris. That seems simple enough but many beginners don’t actually know how to find Polaris.
If that’s you – don’t worry. I’ll show you how to set your mount and telescope up to get aligned to Polaris.

Finding Polaris – Method 1

Finding Polaris – Method 2

Your mounts RA axis is now roughly pointing to Polaris, Now we have to make sure the telescope is in line with the mounts RA axis. First loosen the RA and DEC lock knobs as shown below making sure you have a hold of your telescope. I am assuming if your reading this you most likely have a small, lightweight scope and have already balanced it on the mount. If your haven’t then you should check how to balance your telescope.Your done and your telescope and mount are now aligned well enough for most observation needs.

You can now simply locate an object using the DEC and RA movements and track it using either just the RA slow motion control or allow your motor ( if fitted ) to track with just the odd correction.

If your using your telescope in the backyard simply make a note of where the telescope was pointing when aligned to Polaris. In my house I know the rear wall faces North almost exactly. Using that and leaving the latitude adjustment alone I can be set up in minutes. Its not a perfect alignment but it will be perfectly adequate for most observing needs with an equatorial mount.

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I hope you have enjoyed the guide and I hope its of some use to beginners out there. May all your stars be visible all the time.

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