PoleMaster — A revolutionary way of doing polar alignment
Obtains precise polar alignment in under 5 minutes and no more neck, back and knee pain. Works at both northern & southern hemisphere with atmospheric refraction correction.
Latest updates
16 Jan 2016: Lots of stock and ready to ship in 24 hours. Southern sky support and atmospheric refraction correction are now implemented. What are you waiting for?
For latest software, please visit the download section at the bottom of this page.
Say goodbye to the knee/back torturing polar alignment nights
Many of us have faced varying degrees of challenges to polar align our equatorial mount. Be it neck pain, stress on the knees or accidentally kicking the tripod, you must have had some of these frustrations down the load. PoleMaster allows you to do polar alignment at the comfort in front of your computer to a high degree of precision. While it will not help you align your mount mechanically, you can easily tell the true north position from your screen and adjust your mount accordingly without squatting, kneeling or whatever pose you favour to look through the polar scope.
PoleMaster is very simple to use. Simply attach it to the RA axis of your mount with mount specific adapter, with Polaris and the surrounding region visible, PoleMaster software will do a plate solve and show you the current pointing of RA axis and the true north position. Overlap these two circles and you are good to go. QHYCCD claims this can be done within 2 minutes. We're very eager to verify this figure.
台灣同好促銷優惠
台灣的同好，請在下單時用折?代碼"PoleMaster Taiwan"以獲取170美元的特殊優惠價兼免運費到台灣任何地址。
Advantages
Polar alignment in 2 minutes
Simply follow the steps prompted by PoleMaster software and you will have a very precise polar alignment.
Polar alignment without neck pain, ankle and muscle strain
With PoleMaster, you can do polar alignment at the comfort of sitting on your chair and looking at your computer screen. Cruching down and trying hard to peek through your polar scope is now in history.
Accurate to 30" of true north pole
PoleMaster will first prompt you to do center axis calibration and then rough alignment which yields an accruacy around 5 arcminutes. Next, you will be asked to do fine alignment which PoleMaster will plate solve against the known stars. The accuracy after this step is approximately 30 arcseconds, much better than most polar scopes' 120 arcseconds (2 arcminutes) accuracy.
One star alignment is sufficient to enable goto instead of 3-star-alignment
As the RA axis is aligned to a high accuracy, one star alignment is sufficient to get your go-to going. There goes the night of spending precious imaging time slewing the telescope around the sky.
Allows more accurate tracking with portable tracker limited to single axis autoguiding
Portable star trackers such as AstroTrac's and Star Adventurer do not have motor on the DEC unit. Therefore, the tracking error in the DEC axis can not be guided out. A precise polar alignment could greatly minimise the drifting in the DEC axis and consequently further improves the tracking performances of these portable trackers and enable the use of even longer focal length lens or longer exposure.
Includes
Some hard facts:
| Field of view | 15º x 10º |
| Resolution | 30 arcseconds/pixel |
| Rough alignment accuracy | 5 arcminutes |
| Fine alignment accuracy | 30 arcseconds |
| Computer interface | USB 2.0 |
Compatible mounts
Mounts on the same line share the same adapter.
3D printed plastic adapter will be supplied for mounts when metal adapter is not available yet.