Find Misalignment

How to find polar alignment errors.

Step 1: Take observations

You can use pocs run alignment to take a series of pictures that samples the sky. This procedure will produce a series of pictures for use in the analysis steps below. There are a number of configurable options but the default should be fine for a first step:

$ pocs run alignment --help
Usage: pocs run alignment [OPTIONS]

 Runs POCS in alignment mode.
 Not specifying coordinates is the same as the following:     -c 40,90 -c 55,60 -c 55,120 -c 70,210 -c 70,330

╭─ Options ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ --coords         -c      TEXT     Alt/Az coordinates to use, e.g. 40,55 [default: None]                      |
│ --exptime        -e      FLOAT    Exposure time in seconds. [default: 30.0]                                  │
│ --num-exposures  -n      INTEGER  Number of exposures. [default: 5]                                          │
│ --field-name     -f      TEXT     Name of field. [default: PolarAlignment]                                   │
│ --help                            Show this message and exit.                                                │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

Step 2: Download drift data from the observations

• Beginner's tutorial on how to create, open and run a Jupyter notebook: https://www.dataquest.io/blog/jupyter-notebook-tutorial/

• Download the Jupyter notebook file PANOPTES - 03 Drift Observation Polar Alignment.ipynb in this link to your local laptop/computer.

• Follow the steps in the Jupyter Notebook, run one cell at a time consecutively until you reach the end of the notebook.

Step 3: Fix misalignment in your mount

• Use the alt (deg) and az (deg) values obtained from the notebook to do the polar alignment as described in Fix Misalignment.

Fix Misalignment