Celestron Ultima 8 - Finding 90º Declination for Polar Alignment

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Move the telescope to the object you
previously defined as NEW01. Center it in
the eyepiece.
E
ARTH
NEW01
Press ENTER, Press ENTER Perform an align operation on
NEW01.
E
ARTH
NEW01
Move the telescope to another previously
defined NEW object. Let’s say NEW03.
E
ARTH
NEW01
Press ENTER Enter into the EARTH option. NEW OBJ
NEW0
1
Press UP 2X Choose the NEW object you want to
align to.
NEW OBJ
NEW0
3
Press ENTER Perform an align operation on the
NEW object.
EARTH
W= -0.1
Press MENU Return to the main menu. Now you
can slew to any of the NEW objects
you have programmed into the
database.
MENU
A
LIGN
You are now aligned to the terrestrial objects you defined in your user definable NEW catalog. You can slew to any of
the objects now. You can only slew to the objects that you programmed into the database for a particular observing site.
Finding 90º Declination for Polar Alignment
For polar alignment, it is essential to know when the telescope is pointed straight up, relative to the forks. When the
telescope is on a wedge, this is 90º declination. You know when the telescope is pointed straight up, parallel to the forks
by using the POSITION menu. Here is how to do it!
BUTTON or ACTION
NOTES DISPLAY
Set the telescope to its downstops.
Turn telescope and hand control ON. Turning the telescope ON at the
altitude downstop, references the
encoder so it knows where it is.
MENU
A
LIGN
Press DOWN three times. Go down to the POSITION menu. MENU
P
OSITION
Press ENTER Enter into the POSITION menu.
R
A DEC
Press DOWN Scroll down to the TELESCOP
setting.
T
ELESCOP
Press ENTER Relative telescope positions are
displayed. The bottom number is the
altitude axis.
174.96
-088.85
Point the tube upward until the altitude
display reaches a maximum value.
About +090 is straight up relative to
the forks. The actual number will be
+089.???.
189.83
+089.47
The value will not actually be +90º. This is because the telescope has some mechanical characteristics which are unique
to each telescope. All telescopes have mechanical characteristics like non-perpendicularity of the two axes, non-
parallelism of the optical axis with the mechanical axis, and encoder errors. The Ultima 2000 software accounts for these
errors and makes corrections for them. Because of these corrections, the altitude reading will not read 90º. It will reach a