Phone Polar Alignment

[@solareclipsetimer]

This is a really good idea! Thank you for sharing it.

[@MichaelShields-mo9nq]

wonderful!

[@GerRidOfThem]

Neat idea, never thought of this trick. Thanks!

[@paradoxpraveen3968]

Thank you so much. Great and simple idea

[@briansalomon1]

Good tips. Thanks.

[@jimlothridge8356]

Thank you, very helpful.

[@Unavidadevideos]

nice video!.. keep uploading stuff like this

[@shoshanae3830]

I guess I'll just use Skyeye and strap my phone to the tracker and aim at Polaris (for daytime)

[@NatarajanGanesan]

One of my favorite apps

[@MyRadDesign]

You are attempting to train the magnetometer of the phone, not the accelerometer. By slowly moving the cellphone in an area free of metal objects the three sensitive axes of the magnetometer are exposed to both the minimum and maximum values from the Earth's magnetic field, which allows a calibration routine to compensate for hard and soft iron distortions which otherwise would lead to erroneous compass headings. However, when one places the phone on a metal telescope mount this calibration can be somewhat invalidated by the metal, the amount may be small or large depending if the metal is ferrous or if it has been magnetized or not. To see how close this technique will get you, try it out before polar aligning your scope to see how close you can get with this method. I will, and will post my results.

[@MyRadDesign]

Tried this method out and got poor results due to strong magnetic fields when I place the phone flat on my iOptron Skytrack mount. A good compass and an inclinometer is what I will continue to use. The compass I use is a Silva Ranger which has a built in inclinometer.

[@TheAstronerd]

You are right

[@TheAstronerd]

@@MyRadDesign : If you have a lot of ferric based metal close to your wedge, this will have a HARD TIME WORKING RIGHT.

[@trinity_hill]

Good Morning. What is the name of this app? In the KZbin translation writes the wrong name. I've been looking for an app like this for a long time, because I have buildings exactly in the polaris position. Thanks. Good Video. Like! Hug and Success.

[@TheAstronerd]

Any planetarium app that will allow you to point at the sky to identify the things you are looking at and also has a "Telrad" cross-hair will work.

[@TheAstronerd]

SkEye

[@shoshanae3830]

So you are doing this for an eclipse and tracking the sun, which is different from tracking planets for a conjunction, so I think for that you would need to polar align your tracker (then I would put my camera on it). I don't get why you are aligning your tripod and then say your scope will track the sun. You didn't align your scope. Please explain further. Thanks. You are more geared to us astronomers anyway, rather than people just talking about apps for polar alignment and they don't mention related concepts to astronomy. So for planet tracking this would be sidereal, different from solar tracking. So I thought the title meant you are aligning to polaris. Please make more videos:)

[@TheAstronerd]

By aligning the RA to polar by using this method, you get very close to polar alignment. Remember that this is alignment in the Daytime and for an emergency move. It's not perfect but it does get you in the right mode for a Solar Eclipse.

[@nchabanier]

Sku ie? It doesn't t exist....

[@TheAstronerd]

SkEye