Hey Mark,

That's essentially what I was referring to except you don't have to use a computer program to facilitate the alignment, only the mount's GOTO.

See, for example, 

    http://www.cloudnet.com/~dsastro/PolarAlignIT/PolarIterative.htm

and Michael Covington's very descriptive six-page evaluation of IPA via Meade GOTO in which he discusses the limitations of the method and recommendations for alleviating them.  I recommend anyone interested in polar alignment to read his paper.

   http://www.cloudnet.com/~dsastro/PolarAlignIT/PolarIterative.htm

Perry  (Well, maybe we're a little OT here, but I didn't bring this up!!!)

Perry

--- On Sun, 7/27/08, Mark Gaffney <markgaffney@mac.com> wrote:

From: Mark Gaffney <markgaffney@mac.com>

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Iterative Polar Alignment

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Date: Sunday, July 27, 2008, 9:17 PM

Hi Perry, I think a 3 star alignment helps the scope/mount find it`s
bearings. IPA in Astroplanner slews to the alignment star first & when
synced will tell you your error in alignment. Then the pole star (if
you`re lucky enough to be on cue!) is slewed to and corrections made
with the mount`s adjustments & the same process is repeated to
eliminate error. Mark.
On 28/07/2008, at 10:59 AM, hpholcomb wrote:

> Can't iterative polar alignment with a GOTO mount be done with Polaris
> and another star that is sufficiently separated from P using just the
> mount's GOTO program (like Vixen's Starbook-S on my GPD2, for
> example)??
>
> Perry
>
>
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