Maybe you have just rocked up to your first star party where hopefully you will make some life long friends and get help setting up
Or maybe you are heading down to a local park to avoid the streetlight outside of your house, or you drag everything out of the garage and set up in the back yard.
No matter what your flavour is, here are a few things that will help get you going.
My assumptions about you..
In writing this blog, I am going to make a few assumptions about your goals, your kit and the type of image you want to capture.
You intend to take your first Deep Space astroimage and you are using a DSLR you intend to attach to your telescope
You are using a German equatorial mount (GEM)
You have a tripod for the mount to sit on
You have a power source for the mount and batteries for your camera
You have a handset for the telescope mount
You are not guiding
Things you should have with you that would help, a lot
Imaging in the field or setting up at home can be a bit stressful at first if you are not used to getting setup. Over time you get the hang of it but even if I am going to a star party when I normally use a permanent setup gives me the conniptions as I try to remember all the things that need to happen.
Here are a few things I have used over the years just to get the mount roughly aligned that you might find useful:
A compass, an old school or one on your phone that can show True North as well as Mag but there are plenty of options. Do not rely on markings a manufacturer has put on their mount. As pretty as they are, with some manufacturers, there's no guarantee they are accurate as I found out 6 months after starting trying to get decent polar alignment
A widget for measuring declination (or again, one on your phone). I have one of these but there are plenty of options. Do not rely on markings a manufacturer has put on their mount. As pretty as they are, with some manufacturers, there's no guarantee they are accurate as I found out 6 months after starting trying to get decent polar alignment
A small spirit level helps when using a GEM mount, its not absolutely critical but it does make getting polar aligned a bit easier
a straight edge long enough to span and touch the bottom of the rear two tripod legs at the same time
Your GPS location..google maps will show your coordinates
The aim here is to get as close as possible to polar alignment before using handset routines or any other manual methods like {drift align} to fine tune.
Setting it all up
Setup and level the tripod.
Before adding the mount head and introducing additional metal close to a compass, with the front leg central and pointing close to south, take the straight edge and place it so it touches the back of both rear legs.
Place your compass on the ground using the straight edge as a rule to snug the compass up against and align the tripod so that you your compass is aligned with tru north after factoring in adjustments for your locations magnetic deviation
Put your mount head on your tripod and secure it.
Using your inclinometer, adjust for your latitude using your mounts altitude adjustment knobs
If you are luck enough to be in the northern hemisphere and you have sight of the pole star, touch up with your polar alignment scope and azimouth adjustment knobs. There are a number of great apps available which shows the location of the SCP or NCP depending on your location as you would see it from the polar scope. The one I use is Astro-Physics Polar alignAP 2.6
Just add on your telescope and attach your camera.
Thats pretty much it for the basics of setting up. The next key thing you need to get your head around is Polar Alignment