Alignment of Scope at North Pole

[zong]

Hi all, I chanced on this interesting question in my brain while doing some other astronomy related reading. As the subject goes:

When you are at the very North pole of the Earth and you set up a telescope on a RA-dec mount, where does your "North" of the tripod point to?

I'm sure people will start asking, "magnetic or celestial north?", actually i don't really know, my brain is getting conked out by ns. How about an answer for both of them? I was more thinking of North when the North star is right at your zenith, so that should be celestial north..

And that question leads to another one that just sprang up my mind, what about the South Pole? Over there, everywhere is north, so you just face your tripod anywhere? Some enlightened soul pls open up my ns-rotted brain pls.. :k-?:

[VinSnr]

Hi all, I chanced on this interesting question in my brain while doing some other astronomy related reading. As the subject goes:

When you are at the very North pole of the Earth and you set up a telescope on a RA-dec mount, where does your "North" of the tripod point to?

I'm sure people will start asking, "magnetic or celestial north?", actually i don't really know, my brain is getting conked out by ns. How about an answer for both of them? I was more thinking of North when the North star is right at your zenith, so that should be celestial north..

And that question leads to another one that just sprang up my mind, what about the South Pole? Over there, everywhere is north, so you just face your tripod anywhere? Some enlightened soul pls open up my ns-rotted brain pls.. :k-?:

North pole, just point the scope towards the zenith...the celestial pole should be right up there.

For south pole, when doing polar alignment, it is the same. Also point at the zenith.

[kayheem]

And that question leads to another one that just sprang up my mind, what about the South Pole? Over there, everywhere is north, so you just face your tripod anywhere? Some enlightened soul pls open up my ns-rotted brain pls.. :k-?:

North pole, just point the scope towards the zenith...the celestial pole should be right up there.

For south pole, when doing polar alignment, it is the same. Also point at the zenith.

That's right. when you are in the south pole, point to zenith, but do not forget to switch the direction on the hand control.

[zong]

Ahh, understood. So actually when we talk about north alignment, we really are talking about alignment to the north star and not the north.. I had the wrong conception all along, because in singapore we just point north!! Stupid me. :violent: Or am I wrong again? :k-?:

[weixing]

Hi,
Basically, the EQ mount become a Alt-Az mount when use in the Pole. So basically the Alt-Az mount is an EQ mount when use in the pole.. hee hee

Ahh, understood. So actually when we talk about north alignment, we really are talking about alignment to the north star and not the north.. I had the wrong conception all along, because in singapore we just point north!! Stupid me. Or am I wrong again?

You don't align to Polar Star, you align to North Celestial Pole or True North. We use Polar Star to do polar alignment because it is very near to True North. So if you look through a Polar Scope, you'll see a line to the centre with markings and years along the line. The marking and year indicate where you need to put the Polar Star in a given year when doing the polar alignment.

Have a nice day.