While testing out the club’s AT10RC this last month, I did some polar alignment work using star trails. This picture of the North Celestial Pole (NCP) has a field of view of just 22 arcminutes. While the image is useful for diagnostic purposes, it is easily outshined by wide-field views having land horizons with dramatic backgrounds.
The picture was taken using a ZWO-183 Color Cooled Camera on an Atlas EQ-G mount “parked” near Home position. It is a 1 hour stacked image captured by ASI Studios ASILive App set to 270 gain and an exposure of 30 seconds.
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It is an interesting view, indeed. Polaris has a small star trail in a 1 hour exposure.
Funny I’ve never seen that in those wide field views. Probably too small to notice the circle.
After further investigation, I have determined the actual bright star in this photograph is SAO 3788 and have updated my numbers in this thread accordingly.
The Field of View for this star trail image is 0.37 degrees. From the center to each corner is about 14 arcmin. Polaris is a magnitude 2 star that is 38 arcmin from the center, which puts it out of view. The brightest star shown is SAO 3788, who is 10 arcmin from the center and has a magnitude of 9.74.
