Polar Alignment

This instruction set will help you polar align the PANOPTES unit once it has been deployed and is fully operational with cloud storage set up.

Equatorial mounts, such as those used by PANOPTES units, require that the mount be properly aligned with the celestial sphere so that they can track the stars accurately.

This can be done with what is called a polar alignment, where the rotation axes of the mount (the Right Ascension and Declination axes, aka RA/Dec) are aligned with the rotation axis of Earth.

The Overview explains the concept of polar alignment in detail and why you need to polar align your PANOPTES unit. If you are already familiar with the concept of polar alignment, skip to Drift Method to learn about the method or to Procedure to do the polar alignment.