QHY PoleMaster...

[RobertM]

Not sure whether anyone still does astronomy or takes images anymore ?  Anyway...

Anyone spotted this product http://qhyccd.com/PoleMaster.html#PoleMaster?  It looks quite interesting as a help to get good polar alignment.

There's also a thread on CN about PoleMaster and that has links to a paper a man named Rick Kellogg did a few years ago.  The paper included examples and code in which he expressed a hope that it would be taken up by makers of guide programs; this could be just co-incidence of course but PoleMaster does seem to follow the original work quite closely.

Here's a link to the original paper: http://www.syracuse-astro.org/pdf/2012_August_R_Kellogg_Electronic_Polar_Alignment_Scope.pdf

If you're interested of course.

Robert

[JohnP]

Looks interesting - its been so long I cant even remember how I used to polar align - I used to be able to do it quite quickly in the field with reasonable accuracy (or good enough for my imaging) - Don't think I could justify $300 unless it comes with a lifetime cloud free guarantee....

Fay - if you get one I'd be interested in a write up...

John

[MarkS]

It's a great idea!  I've often thought about doing something similar but the manual method works fine enough for me and I don't have time to develop all the astro software for which I have ideas germinating in my head. 

I see they have a patent but I can't imagine what part of it they have patented.  Rick Kellogg's paper clearly describes the technique so I can't see what would prevent anyone stuffing a QHY5 (with lens) on the polar axis of a mount and writing some software to duplicate his approach.  In fact he wrote it in the hope that PHD or Maxim might implement it.

Mark

Later edit: 
Patent is here:  http://www.google.com/patents/CN204269938U
If I understand it correctly, it looks like they've patented a CMOS camera with inbuilt inclination and magnetic sensors plus a USB port and also the attachments for various mounts.
However, I don't understand the need for the inbuilt sensors.

[RobertM]

My thoughts too.  As long as an area around the polar axis is visible then a finder/guide scope might be sufficient.  Unfortunately it seems to need a goto mount (for which there are alternative methods); it would have been really useful for it to have been able to work with the push to mounts of this world.  It's an expensive option as it is.

Robert

[Fay]

John, I have enough to think about as it is!

[Ivor]

It does look like an interesting product. There are mounts out there which don't require polaris to polar align couldn't that algorythm been adapted for all mounts and be a cheaper solution still? Does anyone know how they work?

[JohnP]

John, I have enough to think about as it is!

common Fay - I cant remember how many times I've been out imaging with you & you've been 'effing & blinding' about not being able to find pole star You know you want one & its bound to make your imaging much better & just think some new software to get your head around

go on - Buy...Buy...Buy....

[Carole]

Probably a good idea but seems a lot of expense and faff to me.  Surely Alignmaster would do just as good a job.
Like John I normally do a manual PA for imaging and it's not affected the stars, though of course I don't have a highly powered scope, so maybe that would be more critical. 

Carole

[Mac]

You may waste another hour to do that and to your dismay you realise the sun is rising

He takes over an hour to polar align, no wonder he designed this he must be doing something wrong,
Even drift alignment takes about 10 mins,
about the same time to do the itteritive goto alignment.

Mac.

[Mike]

Astrotortilla is free software that can polar align your scope in literally a few minutes. Duncan put me onto it and it worked a treat.