QHY PoleMaster Electronic Polar Alignment Scope

Please Note: Use of the PoleMaster requires a mount adapter specific to your mount. Adapters are sold separately and are not included with the PoleMaster.

1. Easy Polar Alignment for Astrophotograpy

Getting good polar alignment with an equatorial mount is an important task for astrophotographers, but it’s not always an easy one. It can take away valuable dark-sky time to precisely align a mount with the celestial pole, and it’s not possible to know if you have good polar alignment until you start taking images. Precise alignment may take several attempts, and if you accidentally bump your mount during the night, you need to start over again.

The PoleMaster from QHY makes polar alignment easy. With this innovative little device, you can align your mount in just a few minutes with a few simple, easy-to-follow steps, often to an accuracy as good as 30 arc-seconds. The PoleMaster takes the tedium out of polar alignment and leaves you with more time to actually do astrophotography!

2. How PoleMaster Works

PoleMaster uses a super-sensitive wide-field imaging camera that’s mounted on the RA axis of your mount using a PoleMaster mount adapter (sold separately). The camera in the PoleMaster images the region around Polaris in real time, detecting Polaris itself as well as the fainter nearby stars. Using the positions of these stars, PoleMaster determines the position of the north celestial pole and compares it to the mount’s RA axis of rotation. Polar alignment is now a simple matter of moving the two centers of rotation so they overlap. Once aligned, you can continue to monitor polar alignment during the night and easily re-align your mount if it’s accidentally bumped or moved.

3. Advantages of QHY PoleMaster

Speed and Convenience. Once the PoleMaster is placed on your mount, you don’t need to unblock or kneel down to sight through your polar scope. You don’t need to dark adapt your eye to see the stars around the celestial pole. You don’t need to level your mount. You don’t even need to enter the date and time in your mount’s hand controller to figure out where to put Polaris in the field of view.

Accuracy. Achieve polar alignment as close as 30 arc-seconds, far better than you can achieve with your eye and a polar scope.

Ease of Installation. PoleMaster can be easily installed onto any nearly equatorial mount with mount-specific adapters (sold separately). It can even work on mounts without a polar scope.

Real Time Adjustments. By using PoleMaster you can monitor your polar alignment in real time. In the event that polar alignment is lost, it’s a simple matter to bring it back without having to start from scratch.

Simplified Alignment. Once you are polar aligned with the PoleMaster, you only need to perform a one-star alignment to get your mount aligned to the night sky, saving you even more time.

Note: The QHY Polemaster has an 11-degree x 8-degree field of view. You will need at least 4 degrees of unobstructed sky around Polaris for it to function properly.

Specifications

• Field of View: 11 degrees x 8 degrees
• Sensitivity: 9th Magnitude
• Coarse Adjustment: 5 arc minutes
• Fine Adjustment: Up to 30 arc seconds
• Computer Interface: Mini USB2.0 Port
• Software: QHYCCD PoleMaster Calibration Software
• Internal non-volatile memory: Non-volatile internal EEPROM memory capable of storing several small frames for calibration routines, focus, optic analysis, etc.
• Weight: 106g