Very practical tool to find stars from chart coordinates
I recently got a basic star tracker. I found It can be difficult to find objects visually.
To aid in finding objects of interest I tried the following and it worked quite well.
After alignment of my tripod + tracking mount to the celestial pole, I adjust my pan and tilt head positions on the tracker. Setting pan angle to 0degrees. ( note, you could also use a ball head but its harder to set altitude later ) Adjust tilt on the head until my camera lens is pointing at Polaris. If the tracker is aligned to the pole then the tilt should be approximately 0degrees.
Now look up a star chart and find your objects RA and declination. Punch those numbers into this app. The altitude and azimuth numbers provided by the app can then be applied to the pan angle and altitude (with current latitude of your location subtracted).
Your camera should now point in the direction of the desired celestial object.
Simple and effective solution.
Thanks for a great little App.
To aid in finding objects of interest I tried the following and it worked quite well.
After alignment of my tripod + tracking mount to the celestial pole, I adjust my pan and tilt head positions on the tracker. Setting pan angle to 0degrees. ( note, you could also use a ball head but its harder to set altitude later ) Adjust tilt on the head until my camera lens is pointing at Polaris. If the tracker is aligned to the pole then the tilt should be approximately 0degrees.
Now look up a star chart and find your objects RA and declination. Punch those numbers into this app. The altitude and azimuth numbers provided by the app can then be applied to the pan angle and altitude (with current latitude of your location subtracted).
Your camera should now point in the direction of the desired celestial object.
Simple and effective solution.
Thanks for a great little App.
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Don’t bother
For one, it forces Location Services ON. That makes my objective — determining Az and Alt for another location — rather difficult. (Read:impossible) For another, totally unresponsive to user input, with exception of help buttons. OK, fine; I didn’t want to enter Lat and Long anyway. Last, tiny white font on bright green bckgrnd is really, really difficult to read. Right after I post, I’m deleting it.
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