How to Align Telescopes on Equatorial Mounts

Video Transcript

"All right, to use this type of telescope mount effectively, the telescope has to be oriented correctly to the sky. Specifically, the rotation axis of the telescope has to be pointing directly at the celestial pole, the north celestial pole. For all intents and purposes, the north star Polaris is basically right at the pole. So, if you can get your mount to where it's at least pointing at Polaris then this telescope will track objects really well. It won't track them precisely but, for the most part, you won't be able to tell much of a difference. So, to do that there's a simple alignment procedure that you can go through. One is that if I were to take this telescope and I point it directly at the North Star, the likely scenario is that my telescope happens to be pointed at the North Star but it's not parallel with the tines and the rest of the base. So, in other words, the tube part of my telescope is actually pointing at the North Star and it's alignment with it but the mount is misaligned. Or, I can have a situation where my mount happens to be aligned with the North Star but the tube happens to be misaligned. In that case, you wouldn't actually see the North Star in your field of view. So, there's a way that you can actually use both the mount and the tube together to figure out if your mount is aligned properly. So, first off, there are two main adjustments for this type of mount. One is adjusting the altitude of the mount. So, in other words, the support tines may need to move either up or down. And, finally, the whole base may need to move from side to side. Once you get those two directions aligned right then your mount is pretty much aligned perfectly. So, the way that I like to do it is I turn the support tines to where they are both the same distance from the ground. So, if I were to lay a level across here, the level would say that the two tines are level with on another. Now, the telescope can only move in this direction and the whole mount can only move in this direction. So that means that if I see any misalignment in this direction, in the asmouth, that means that I need to adjust my entire mount. So that's the first step. I get everything level here, I look through the finer scope to see if I can see Polaris, and then I adjust my mount sideways until Polaris is centered left to right in my field of view. Then, I turn the tines 90 degrees. In this case now, the only misalignment in the altitude direction, up and down, can only be in the tines. Which means the tines can only go up or down. So in this case, I now adjust the altitude until I see Polaris fall into the cross the crossers in the vertical position. Now, having done that in both the horizontal and the vertical position, my mount should now be aligned with the North Star. Now it may take a couple of times to go back and forth between aligning it horizontally like this or aligning it vertically like this because, as you do this, not only are you aligning your mount but you're also moving your telescope to where it's now perpendicular to the tines. So it takes about three or four times. But, once you get to Polaris in the field of view and then you look into your eye piece, rotate your telescope and, as you do that, if Polaris basically stays in the same point, everything rotates around it, that means that your mount is now aligned with the North Celestial Pole."