How to use a QHYCCD Polemaster Hey everyone I'm mack murdock here with opt and today
we're going to be going over the QHYCCD Polemaster. The Polemaster is a
perfect tool to help you achieve perfect polar alignment in under five
minutes in this video we're going to run through how to set it
up so that you can get it right on your first try
the Polemaster is able to fit a variety of different mounts as long as you have
the right adapter for it for this video i'll be using the skywatcher eq6r
pro to start you want to fit the adapter into the polarscope opening
and use your hex key to tighten the set screws inside to lock it in place
next you want to screw the other side of the adapter onto the Polemaster camera
finally you place the pull master onto your mount and tighten the set screw
the Polemaster comes with a usb connection so you can plug it into your
computer before you can start using the pull
master you have to download the driver and the software on your computer
be sure to do that where you have an internet connection before you go out
and shoot alright so here we are inside of the
Polemaster software the first thing we're going to do is go
to the top where it says device and click connect
and this will actually connect your computer with the Polemaster
if you're roughly polar aligned you should see polaris on your screen and
hopefully you don't have any trees in your view like i do
up here it asks which hemisphere you're in we're shooting in los angeles so
we're going to leave it at north over here you can adjust the Polemaster
settings and make it easier to see the stars
you don't want to make it too bright because if you do your stars will be all
bloated and you actually get a finer adjustment if you leave it at a low
setting i think for this we'll leave it at
exposure 100 and gain 70. and now we're going to try and get
our pointer as close to the center of polaris as we can
and then we'll double click it these circles will pop up
the slider over here moves the circles around but you can also hit the plus or
minus keys on the screen or the plus or minus keys on your
keyboard they both work the same or you can click
the slider and drag it to move the circles faster
we want to line these circles up with their respective stars
so i'm going to fine tune it with the buttons okay
so we see the stars are in the circles once that's done we can hit success
it's telling us to choose a star other than polaris
so we're going to choose this star and get as close to the center as possible
and then we're going to double click it's going to ask us to rotate the mount
clockwise 30 degrees so we're going to do that
right now about there's good once that's done we'll
click finish we're going to double click the same
star one more time and rotate it 30 degrees again
and by the way you can either rotate the mount by hand
or you can use whatever software you want to move the mount electronically
it doesn't matter so we'll double click that star one more time
and now a green circle will appear on the screen
so we're going to move our mount back to the home position and we want to make
sure that our star follows that green circle
so we're going to click polaris again and those circles are going to pop
right back up we're going to do the same thing as before
move the circles on top of the stars and then click success
now we're going to adjust the altitude and azimuth knobs
and we want polaris to be in this circle so we're trying to get as close as
possible i'm pretty happy with this so let's hit
finish now we're going to double click polaris
one last time and after we click it we're going to
make sure these circles are still around their stars
the final step is to click start monitor right over here
and we're going to see a green square and a red circle
the whole point of this is to get the green square on the red circle
what helps is leaving your mouse on top of the red circle so that it stays
enlarged on the top left corner this just makes it easier to
be precise with your alignment and just so you know it's completely
normal that your green square jumps around a little bit
that's because of bad seeing an atmospheric distortion that's out of
your control so don't stress and just get it as close
as you can and once you get those two aligned
you can click done and be fully polar aligned with the north celestial pole
and be ready to image whatever you want in the night sky
once you start polar aligning with the polemaster there's no going back
if you're interested in getting a poll master for yourself we've included the
link in the description below for you to check out
if you guys found this video helpful be sure to leave us a like and give us your
thoughts in the comment section below remember to subscribe if you haven't
already and we'll be seeing you in the next video
clear skies to you!
OPT Telescopes