QHY PoleMaster EQ Mount Polar Alignment Camera
Accessories Added
- Field of View: 11-degree x 8-degree
- Resolution: approx. 30 arcseconds
- Install Method: 3 M3 screws to a mount adapter (mount adapter is sold separately)
- Interface: Mini USB
- Rough Precision: approx. 5 arcminutes
- High Precision: Max 30 arcseconds
- Dimensions: 40 mm Diameter, 50.7 mm tall
- Power Consumption: approx 0.35 Watt 70 mA
- Don't forget your Adapter for your mount!
Vendor Number: 100061
DESCRIPTION
QHY PoleMaster EQ Mount Polar Alignment Camera
More than just a polar alignment scope, QHY incorporates guide scope technology into a polar alignment camera creating a high-precision electronic polar alignment scope. Polar aligning is easily one of the most frustrating aspects of owning an EQ mount. Without total precision your long imaging sessions may lead to even more frustration and, worse, not being able to capture the type of images you're hoping to achieve. And what happens when you bump into your tripod in the dark? You have to realign potentially spending even more time repeating the process.
QHYCCD's PoleMaster reduces your polar alignment process by employing a highly sensitive camera. Mounted to the front of your RA axis, the the polar alignment cameras will capture an image of the northern sky and then will calculate based on that image, where true north is. Displaying this information and RA rotation on a screen, you can then quickly and easily adjust the mount to the correct position. Since the sensor in the camera is much more sensitive than the human eye, this allows for polar alignment before the night is truly dark buying you just that much more time to image.
Here are a few reasons why the QHY PoleMaster EQ Mount Polar Alignment Camera is the perfect telescope accessory for any system:
1. Speed and convenience: You do not need to move the telescope to a specific place just to unblock the polar scope. You do not need to kneel or contort your body to look through the polar scope. You do not need to fully dark adapt just to see the pole star. You do not need to level your mount. You do not need to worry about the entering the date and time in your handset and figure out where to rotate the mount to coincide with the current pole star position.
2. Accuracy: With a high precision camera, one can achieve accuracy not achievable with the naked eye. The imaging camera in has a resolution of 30 arc second, so the best polar alignment that can be achieved by PoleMaster is also in the order of 30 arc seconds.
3. Wide angle view of the polar region: A wide field of view of 11 x 8-degrees makes it very easy to locate the pole star
4. Easy to install: it can be easily installed onto any equatorial mount through mount-specific adapters, even on mounts without a polar scope.
5. Real time polar alignment checking / adjustment: You can monitor your polar alignment in real time. In the event that polar alignment is lost, it is now a simple matter to bring it back without having to start from scratch.
6. Three star alignment no longer needed: Once you are polar aligned, you will only need to perform one star alignment - a real time saver.
7. Perfect companion to single axis mounts: When used with single (RA-only) axis mount, good polar alignment will minimize drift in the DEC axis therefore maximizing the performance of your mount.
SPECIFICATIONS
| Field of View | 11 degrees by 8 degrees |
| Free Shipping | Yes |
| Interface | mini USB 2.0 |
| Manufacturer | QHY |
| Resolution | 30 Archseconds aprox |
| Warranty | 1 Year Warranty |
| Weight | 115 g (0.25 lb) |
GALLERY
Customer Reviews
- Reviews
- Questions
QHY PoleMaster
My first use of the PoleMaster went very well, quick and easy to learn how to use and it gave me very good polar alignment without having to drift align. Also very happy with OPT as a source to purchase from, all employees that I spoke to were very helpful in answering my questions.
Not focused
Ordered the QHY polemaster polar finder it arrived finally got to test it after many nights of cloudy skies only to find out that it seems out of focus stars look very blurry
Quick and easy
My overall opinion of the PoleMaster product is shown by my 4 star rating. It does what it claims to do, and as a 70 year old who doesn't want to be crawling around looking though a polar alignment scope, it solves a big problem for me. The only thing I find negative with the product at this point is the joke the vendor describes as a manual. While the software is somewhat intuitive, a good manual would have gone a long way in helping my first attempted use. The folks who sell this product to the public need to get on the Vendor's case about having a good manual, certainly an English version. A good solid manual which covered the menus and reason for each would have made my initial experience much less a learning experience. If it had a good manual, I'd have given it 5 stars. Once you experiment with the menu selections and see what they do, you should be able to get a great alignment in just a few minutes.
Why in the world I did not purchase this earlier?
Installing the adapter for the CGEM II Mount the first time took me less than 10 minutes. Software install was quick and easy. First time use took me about ten minutes to align the telescope. Time savings all the time. Love it. You should buy this item with the mount.
Works like a charm
It couldn’t be better!
Works pretty well, until it doesn't
I used the Polemaster for a while, and it worked pretty well, until it didn't. For some reason, the software won't see the camera on my Windows astro computer, and no amount of software and driver uninstallation and reinstallation or system updating has fixed it. I have supplied a system dump of all installed software, drivers, and peripherals to QHY, and tried their alpha software, all to no avail. It kind of works on a Mac, and works in emulation on a VM (but not on the astro computer). Since I have a Celestron equatorial mount, I tried All Star Polar Align, and it worked! Alignment with ASPA is better than Polemaster ever accomplished, but the entire rig and a good pointing model has to be set up first, which takes about 10 minutes. Once all of that stuff is out of the way, precise polar alignment can be accomplished in about a minute. So, ASPA takes 7 or 8 minutes longer than Polemaster - if you ignore setting up the mount hardware, telescope, and cameras - but doesn't depend on Windows software. Since I normally create a pointing model, and normally put all of the equipment on the mount before precise alignment, the time difference is acceptable.