Project description
Polar alignment is where my nights die. Show me a routine I can repeat in the dark with cold fingers that lands within one or two arcminutes in about fifteen minutes, including the case when the pole is hidden behind trees and I have to use a drift or plate solving method. After that the autoguider has to be set up honestly: a small guide scope or off axis pickoff, calibration near the celestial equator, sensible aggressiveness and backlash settings, so that ten minute subframes come out with round stars at the frame corners and not only in the middle.
Power must survive a full night in frost. I run from a sealed battery and I want a written budget in watt hours for the mount, the cooled camera, two dew heater straps and a small field computer, plus a fused distribution box so I am not dragging six separate wires back to the car. Cable routing matters just as much as electronics: everything strapped and looped so nothing snags when the tube swings past a tripod leg or flips across the meridian, and nothing lying where I will step on it at three in the morning.
What I expect to receive:
— a parts list with weights, prices and a clear reason for each choice;
— a packing plan into two cases one person can carry alone;
— a written setup sequence from unpacking to first guided exposure;
— one evening with me on site, teaching the whole routine end to end.