The better you polar align your mount, the longer you can expose the sky while still getting pin-point sharp stars for the best image quality. The concept of Polar Aligning an equatorial mount such as the Star Adventurer. How To polar Align In The Southern Hemisphere A good polar alignment is crucial in astrophotography, as it allows you to expose longer while keeping the stars round. We also measure the Power with our systems which is essentially the error from the reference sphere to the test optic. The reference sphere we use on our system is a very high quality sphere so the closer to zero the Power, the less error between the 2 elements thus ensuring a higher quality optical surface. If you have never used an equatorial mount for astrophotography before, the first thing you need to know is that polar alignment is critical.

The Star Adventurer has a port for auto guiding. I haven’t used this function myself for two reasons. 1. I don’t have a guide scope & guide camera, and 2. the Star Adventurer can only guide in Right Ascension (RA). The Star Adventurer GTi can support an imaging payload of up to 11 lbs (this includes the weight of the camera, lens or telescope, and all accessories). If you’re familiar with the original star Adventurer, it’s the same overall weight limit, and it’s really not a whole lot. Astrokraken sells a neat 3D printed scale for the Fine-Tuning Mounting Assembly of the Star Adventurer. The Astrokraken Declination Settings Circle for the Star Adventurer. Image Credits: Astrokraken. The differences between the two mounts lie in the hardware, fit and finish, and overall user experience in the dark. The Star Adventurer GTi with an astrophotography telescope mounted (Radian 61). Astrophotography Tests and ResultsWe took a 30–minute exposure of the constellations of Cassiopeia down to Perseus with only slight star trailing. Although light pollution and a slightly hazy atmosphere did not help, a 20-minute exposure revealed pin sharp stars. Both the SAM and Pro come with detailed instruction manuals which take you through how to set up your mount, its different configurations and how to polar align. You can also view these manuals as PDFs online. Summary

The mount body is the workhorse of the Star Adventurer 2i. It contains the integrated polarscope, control selection knob and various ports, yet is quite lightweight and can be used when it’s attached directly to a tripod – with latitude adjustment done via the tripod’s tilt head – or with the supplied equatorial wedge. Equatorial wedge Each mark on the Time Zone Scale represents an interval of 5 degrees of longitude from the Local Standard Time Meridian, LSTM. Currently, only Google’s Pixel smart phone can run Android 11, other brands might start to provide Android 11 devices in one or two months. If you are planning to use Android 11 devices to run Sky-Watcher apps, please do the following: Mount the Star Adventurer on the wedge and the payload on the Star Adventurer. Prefer using the Fine-Tuning Mounting Assembly with the counterweight to balance your gear.

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An optional camera shutter release cable is available separately for many popular camera models/brands. If you’ve followed this blog for some time, you’ll know that I’ve been using my beloved iOptron SkyGuider Pro for a long time, and loving every minute of it. So how does the Star Adventurer Pro compare the SkyGuider?

Let’s say you are imaging at Midnight October 31st, in Time Zone 0 in Greenwich (LSTM=0°), and that you want to image the Pleiades.

The Pro Pack

I still prefer an external intervalometer for astrophotography, but if you want to create a time-lapse, this can be a good option. Ease Of Use Other measurements such as the PV and RMS are important too. With these measurements, the lower the number the better as it shows less curvature on the lens. The flatter an optical lens, the better it will perform. The PV rating (Peak To Valley) is a measurement from the highest point (Peak) to the lowest point (Valley). From this we get the RMS (Root, Mean, Square). This is a similar figure to the PV and measured exactly the same way. The RMS is basically an average height difference from the PV so again, the lower the better. As you can see form the example below, we measured an RMS of just 0.027 wave which is a very good value.