Are you tired of NINA's three-point polar align telling you you need to redo polar align because the starting point was too far off? Or not plate solve at all? Worse, you use ASIAir to polar align which doesn't tell you if your starting point is way off, so that you think you've successfully polar-aligned but, in fact, you haven't, and you are actually still pretty off?

Well, I was. So I created this Polaris Aligner utilizing a green laser pointer to attach to the accessory shoe on the side of the AM5, which is kinda sitting there useless.

It is compact and low-profile enough so that you can leave it permanently attached, until whenever you need to charge the laser pointer, which is done with a USB-mini plug, so you can even do so straight from your power distributor or ASIAir or probably even your mount.

You will need to detach the accessory shoe, rotate 180˚, and reattach, so that the laser pointer comes below rather than above, since if it comes above, the laser pointer will interfere with the DC out port. If you don't use that port and would prefer that orientation, it's very easy to change the orientation of the laser pointer.

There is also a version that will work with AM3. In the photo it's attached to my AM5, but the AM3 has the same set of two socket screws on the saddle plate to attach an accessory shoe. The Laser Polar Aligner simply uses those two screws to be attached directly to the saddle plate. One caveat about the AM3 version is that you need to slew the mount to the Home position before doing your rough alignment. PLEASE STATE WHICH VERSION YOU WANT.

When setting up, just turn the power knob to turn the laser on, orient your tripod first, and then your altitude and azimuth screws to point the green laser at Polaris. Start your TPPA and you will be starting off with a total error of less than a degree (see actual screen grab) 🙂

Please note that the actual item may have a different color scheme that what is shown in the photos and video.