Wellcome to EQAlign
EQAlign is a project that assists to align a German Equatorial Mount (GEM) exactly to the Earth polar axis.
EQAlign born as open source in 2005 With the aim to be a useful tool for the amateur community.
EQAlign is freeware and open source software project with GNU/General Public License.
The method used is that of Julius Scheiner (1858-1913) german mathematic, physic, astronomer and pioneer in astrophotography.
EQAlign is ASCOM compatible and can also directly control various camera models and other standard astronomical devices: main and guider cameras, filter wheel, autoguider device and ASCOM compatible focusers.
Source Forge Community Choice Awards 2009
EQAlign Team:
Antonio Fraga: original idea and main programmer
Francisco José Calvo: programmer and project admin in SourceForge
Daniel Trueba: programmer and betatester
Stephane Gouttebroze: betatester
Germán Bresciano: betatester
Paolo Carlà: betatester
Using its built-in planisphere, you can point your telescope to any object in your local sky. The planisphere resolves the orbital elements of planets, comets and asteroids to calculate their exact position in your local sky and maintains a database with the coordinates of more than 130,000 objects (DSO, Messier, dimstar and star6 catalogues). You can zoom in or out of a specific area. EQAlign shows you information on the coordinates, hour angle, magnitude and other relevant astronomical information of the objects where you hover the cursor.
With EQAlign 4 you can use some star catalogs (UCAC 2, UCAC 3, USNO-B1, USNO-A2, GSC II and 2MASS catalogs) to resolve the astrometry of a photo you just obtained from your main camera. This way, you will be able to know the exact coordinates of where your telescope is pointing. Using this functionality, EQAlign allows you to build a pointing model that will allow you to improve the accuracy of your mount.
If you have an internet cennectivity, EQAlign can obtain a real online photograph from ESO Online Digitized Sky Survey and project it, with the size of your main camera’s sensor on the same map, to get an idea of what you are going to get.
Get a photo from the ESO Online Digitized Sky Survey with your telescope coordinates.
This work is dedicated to Katja Baumhauer and Matías Fraga, for their love and patience