Drift align to polar align?

[JimmyJJA]

Hi,

I have the Celestron Edge HD 11" which has the fastar setup.  So I have the secondary mirror removed, and the hyper star installed (giving me a whopping F2) and camera attached to the front end.  Can I use drift align to align, calibrate and polar align the scope? The "polar align" with this scope is a manual adjustment of the dec/azimuth. I'm assuming I can do it all with the drift align functionality but wanted to confirm.

 

Thanks, jim

[s3igell]

Short Answer:  YES

Longer Answer:  You didn't identify which DSLR Model you use - it'll have to be one that supports LiveView.  Using LiveView for the length of time necessary to do a decent Drift Alignment will tend to Heat-Soak your DSLR.  So, you will want to allot as much of a cooling-down period afterwards as possible (30-60 minutes depending on the Ambient Temp) so that your Imaging Session will be as free of Hot Pixels and Noise as possible (and to match your Darks Library - if you have one).

[JimmyJJA]

ah, I have the Nikon D810. Interesting, did not think about the heat issue. So, if I'm using BYN with live view (meaning the image is on the computer screen, not on the camera) I'm still heating the sensor? 

[astroman133]

LiveView is a live image and is updated several times a second (essentially as fast as the images can download to the camera). With my Canon T5i and BYE I get about 13 frames per second. So the camera is constantly exposing and reading out the sensor. This creates heat. It also uses up a battery, which creates more heat.

I appreciate the work that Guylain put into adding the drift alignment capability into BYE/BYN but I don't always use my DSLR. So when I need to do a drift align, I find that I get the best alignment with PHD2. I also use an off-axis guding arrangement so I am guiding at the focal length of my imaging scope which helps to give me a better PA, since I see the drift more quickly at the longer focal length.

[JimmyJJA]

Interesting, since I'm just beginning with this set up, I'm going to try and minimize Live View during the alignment process and see how that goes. It would be great to see the sensor temp, but it sounds like the SDK does not support it. I think I can also minimize the settings for live view down to 24fps, vs. 60 to minimize heat/battery usage. 

[s3igell]

9 hours ago, JimmyJJA said:

I think I can also minimize the settings for live view down to 24fps, vs. 60 to minimize heat/battery usage. 

This setting would impact only the D810's Movie Modes - not LiveView.