Latest version has a "start from current position" button. So you can manually point your mount whereever you want and start.

I’m already looking forward to your drift alignment test. Such a cliff hanger! 😃

I'm a newbie - just got my setup and feeding from the firehose - I have a wonderful view of the sky from the South to the West but no Polaris so this is a total lifesaver - thank you so much for the video Cuiv!!! Also the one on using the AZ GTI mount in EQ mode - that is part of my setup so also invaluable

Someone paid attention in math class and made a NINA plugin for everyone. Thanks!

I really like your inquisitive approach, and try to verify the result obtained with one piece of software with another. Thanks for sharing and keep that critical point of view!

Loving all the new content, and happy you are doing better.

Thank you - great review. I hope to try it this weekend. Clouds tonight in Cape Town. Appreciate these reviews very much.

Thanks for continuing to produce these videos Cuiv! I hope to give this a try my next time out!

Hi Cuiv. Yet another good video, thank you... After guiding with PHD2 for a while, you can just check the the Polar Alignment Error under the Drift-tab in PHD Log Viewer. No need to run the Guiding Assistant or to Drift Align to find out. I use to check the guiding performance in the Log Viewer now and then during my photo sessions without need to paus the exposures.

As ever, thanks for this insightful video! I am looking forward to the next installment as a lot of my imaging is done from my south facing balcony

I tried this the other night. It works extremely well. In fact last night after I was done imaging, I took the polemaster to see how close it was. I found it was only slightly off. This can be used without using a polemaster or other tools, as I do feel confident this add on is that good. I can see polaris, but its neat you can use any point of the sky to do this. I can see getting used to it, it would actually be faster than the polemaster.

Thanks for this Cuiv. I am excited to try this new feature of NINA, so this is super helpful!

I just ran the NINA 3 point alignment for the first time. Wow!!! I compared it to PHD2 drift alignment. Spot on!!! (also the first time I ran NINA, as well--everything works!)

Thanks for the helpful video. I’m going to give Nina a try. I’m having real problems with star aligning my Eq6r. Possibly suspect cone errors? Further investigation required there. Nina looks useful. Thanks again.

¡Hola, Cuiv! I used this polar alignment last week. Have to admit that it is quite cool and easy to use. Unfortunately for me did not have the results I expected, since I had some issues with my guiding, even the stars I got were not so round. I have a simple Celestron AVX mount, and today I polar aligned it as I used to do before: with the any star polar align that this scope has built in. Now my guiding is decent again and my stars fairly round. So, just wanted to let you know about my personal experience with NINA’s polar alignment compared to the one built in my mount. Again, Cuiv, thanks for sharing! Cheers!

As soon as the winter clouds go away, I'll try to compare this NINA plugin with phd2 drift alignment. My balcony looks directly to north, so these are the only options I have to polar align, since Sigma Octantis is completely to the other side 🤷🏻‍♂️. Happy to have another option with this plugin now. Thanks again for your video, Cuiv!

cant wait to try this method. Tried it few nights ago, but idk what i did bad and it did not work. Hopefully next clear night ill figure out how to PA correctly

Good tutorial. I use ipolar to monitor alignment at all times throughout the night because polar alignment moves during the session.

Isn't it funny how when the lights are turned off, we naturally speak more quietly? Love the video, and am going to attempt this tonight. :)

As usual, a very informative video. I've just started using NINA and I haven't had the courage to use this tool, but I will have to in the summer as I won't be able to see Polaris any more. Could you go over the setting of the limits in EQmod at some point, please? That would be very good!

I would also be interested in seeing how PoleMaster compares with PHD-2 Drift Alignment, SharpCap, & Nina.

Your videos have been unbelievably helpful, keep up the good work! Question - If I drift align with phd2 after I finished polar aligning, would the adjustments I make to drift align mess up my polar alignment?

Thanks for this. I was looking at Sharpcap but, since I don't have a guide scope & guide camera, and use a C8 SCT (with f/6.3 reducer) and a ASI294MC Pro (with IR Cut Filter), Sharpcap didn't seem to suit my purpose (and I didn't way to pay money just for it to not work). I live in the Southern Hemisphere and can't see Polaris - well Sigma Octantis that is - very well (amongst other things like tree cover). NINA looks like it will suit my needs just right for Polar Alignment. FYI: currently have an ASIAIR Plus on backorder that will come who knows when so being able to hook things up to a laptop in the meantime is awesome. Additionally, seeing this video, I will also need to give GSS a go! Also going to use Stellarium/CDC as well. I have a HEQ5 Pro mount. For me, my main purpose is EAA, so this is more than suitable. I was going to look at ASI Live (as part of their ASI Studio PC software) for live stacking as well (and ASIAir App on the iPad when I finally get my ASIAIR Plus).

Hey Cuiv, loving all the great information, thanks, is there a way do achieve the alignment when using the NINA file camera as I don't have a dedicated astro camera, just my Fujifilm X-H2

Thanks for this share. I will lovely try it with my new AM5 next week :)

Cuiv, I did some testing with this and found it to be much more repeatable and accurate results when I expanded the measure point distance to up to 45°. This is much closer to the RA axis sweep range that we use in sharpcap. I found my results to be much more repeatable when i did this. In order to set this up I changed my Alt, Az start point to be roughly @ 45 degrees to sweep evenly across the home position. I'd recommend you try that. I suspect you'll get more consistent results between sharpcap and nina if you do that. Thanks for sharing the knowledge!

Thanks a lot. Your video came just in time as I am currently planning the restart of this hobby

This is great- I love NINA more and more as I use it. On a side note, my IDAS NBZ shipped. I'll do a side-by-side with it and an L-eNhance with my RASA and send you results.

I have noticed using the plugin plate solving works only if I use at least 2x binning . 1x fails to plate solve (imx570 sensor)

This way of polar alignment is also used on ASA Direct Drive mounts, works very well, I always did it 2-3 times.

I love my Go-To EQ6-R, but man I love PA with the SGP iPolar. It's like a mini-game.

After using this once, i dont even look through my polar scope any more. My lazy old back and knees send you thanks :)

Loved the video. Have to try it and do my own test against my pole master which I’ve been very happy with. Also loved my new T-shirt. The coffee mug looks beautiful but needs to be bigger. Doesn’t hold enough coffee.

Hello Cuiv, I am using the PA routine in NINA since it is available (having a south facing balcony in the northern hemisphere) and have very good results with it. I am just going for an error < 3' and then start taking photos. With guiding, I can easily take 300s subs without star trails on my 80mm refractor. So it seems the alignment data NINA provides is quite good.

Thank you for the clarity of your tutorials. In my version NINA 1.10 HF3 in French, I do not have access to plug-ins, let alone the one for polar alignment

Would love to see some more experimentation around which is more accurate (SharpCap vs. Nina vs. Polemaster), and maybe validate using PHD2 drift alignment as others have said? It would be awesome to see the results.

Hi, nice video. I want to ask: Do you use the three point polar alignment with the guide scope + camera scope or the main imaging camera + the main scope? Thanks.

Thanks for another fantastic vid. Is that the beta version you are using? I don't have the plug in icon on my nina screen.

Looking forward to the drift alignment test, unless I get some clear skies to try it out myself before my SharpCap license runs out in roughly a week. :D I really hope the NINA solution works well enough!

Thank you for the information. This is a good feature for someone who live in a area where polaris cannot be seen. But for this, do we need to point to where we can see any star? Is it possible to start at any random position even where there is no star can be seen?

Speaking from the perspective of an astrophotographer in Singapore at only 1 deg N, I can positively confirm that there does appear to be some error between the polar alignment value reported in NINA polar alignment vs the PHD2 drift alignment. However, I have trusted NINA and went on to have fantastic results when polar aligning with it. The best part for me is it saves me tons of time on polar alignment, so more time could be spent enjoying taking those sweet images! Keep up the good work Cuiv! Merci beaucoup pour tes videos!

Awesome vid - I almost wish I would have found it before I spent $253 on an iPolar electronic polar scope. My only reservation about using NINA for PA is my longer focal length 'scopes make the adjustment very touchy and I have to do a bit of back and forth to zero in to an arc-minute or less.

Hi there, can this also work if a DLSR is the camera on a star adventurer?

awesome! Just installed the plugin.....will try this tonight:)

Good morning. For alignment with Nina, what to do when the mount is oriented towards the North, on the wall side of my balcony, this one being oriented due South. The mount will rotate but will therefore only see my wall. THANKS.

Cuiv.. how do you set your mount limits with GS server? Im debating updating Nina so I can get this PA feature but I haven't found how to set limits with GS server.. Thanks

Hi, cuiv, Tested with SharpCap and the plugin, both agree if you do not set the "Correct for Atmospheric Refraction" in SharpCap. Only about 5" to 6" diff. Then they both use the "apparent" celestial pole with no compensation for Atmospheric Refraction. Otherwise there is indeed a big discrepancy. Good to see that you are back in business.

Cuiv, I have already done comparisons with iPolar and Sharp cap and also compared against PhD drift analysis. Nina is far more accurate and I have been staying under an arc minute typically for the whole night. One suggestion, if you're wanting to polar align in the direction of Polaris, set your altitude values to the same as your GPS altitude value i.e. 29,38,0. And for AZ, set 0,1,0. Keep east direction off and stay at 10 degree movements.

My QHY polemaster does this. It's usually 3 arc minutes or so off of what sharpcap gives me. I never have figured out which is more accurate. I had issues with the polemaster drivers so it's just sitting on the mount doing nothing at the moment. Looking forward to giving this a shot once it cools down a bit here.

I'm struggling to get it working because at every steps it stops tracking on my eq6 r pro with eq mod. Is there a way configure the tracking on?

Could I be poiting to opposite direction and use this process?

I tried NINA TPPA, nailed it down to approx 30 arc-sec in both RA & Dec, then I do TPPA again to check polar alignment error again, and I got approx 6 arc-min in RA & Dec, performed knob adjustment again, and check again with TPPA and it seems the result is still not correct, perhaps you can give it a shot this way and see if TPPA agrees with itself.

Hi Cuiv. I tried the Nina 3 point last night and found it got close but not as good as sharpcap. I hope they can make this more accurate as it a very easy way to polar align. Great video as always

Hi. I tried this method last night. I use a Canon DSLR as imaging. After taking the first picture, NINA processed it and then the process showed the "start button" again. Any idea what I'm doing wrong? Thank you!

Sharpcap is much more responsive in live view with my qhy600m camera. Makes it better for a lot of things that NINA would otherwise be much better for. But it can be very nice to have polar alignment options that dont require polaris. It means I can move my scope about a foot or two to the north towards the fence and neighbor's wall, which is going to be a lot more practical, and will open up a lot of the southern sky.

Some info on polar alignment in NINA and SharpCap. I PA aligned in NINA, run 10-star model in 10 micron, PA accuracy calculated by 10 um was 70”. I done the same with Sharpcap PA. 10 um after the same modeling showed 14”. Interestingly, using my previous mount AVX with their software, I was consistently getting the same outcome Sharpcap is better than NINA in PA. Then, I thought “Celestron is probably more compatible with Sharpcap”. Now, it is settled for me: Sharpcap is better in PA.

I have a Nikon DSLR, tracker, and manual mount. I can also only see 60 degrees left and right of south, and only over 30 degrees from the horizon to overhead. Is NINA still do-able?

Will this work with a sky tracker like Ioptron skyguider pro? Asking for a friend.

great video!

Hello, awesome video!! I tried using this last night in Phoenix, Arizona and NINA kept wanting to point the OTA down toward the ground. If I manually slewed and started from current position it would not engage tracking and could not plate solve. I have a Celestron AVX mount. Any suggestions? I am sure the wanting to point toward the ground is due to the azimuth and altitude settings as I have left them default, but I am very new to this and not sure what to set them at.

I would like to use plate solving to find deep sky objects under dark skies for observation only I do not want to use a camera of any sort to photograph. I am only interested in observations. How can I use Nina and plate solving to help find my object through a SCT 10 inch F 10 telescope

Follow-up video ... Which software is actually more accurate / correct ?

Awesome video as always.

I am not guiding in DEC and rely on very accurate PA for imaging, going to have to try this next time i get a chance as i would love to just use NINA for everything. I will say that Sharpcap PA agrees with my guidegraph, DEC barely moves when i have polar aligned to some arcsecond accuracy.

Awesome. Will this plug in work for RA camera drives like the Sky Guider Pro. My building totals blocks Polaris. Thanks

Have you tried this with DSLR cameras? I am hoping to do this without the use of something like a Polemaster.

hi cuiv i have just installed n.i.n.a.64 beta version and i am pulling my hair out trying to get some of the features to work. 1) when using sky atlas and do a search it will not load an image to preview, so i have to send it to the framing assistant to see the image and to seems to have a a lot of square tiles in it. Not sure what i am doing wrong??? 2) i have tried to load some plugins like 3 star polar alignment and i can' t seam to get ANY plugins.....What the Frick is up with that??? and it says no plugins available ??? i am very confused......Do you have any recommendations.

Cuiv, is the imaging from the guidescope or the main camera?

Great video Cuiv

Thanks Cuiv! i’ve taken note of this feature, but Polaris is very available and i’m super comfortable polar-aligning now in Sharpcap. But what i’ll be watching for is your determination of which routine is more accurate! : ) thanks for all you do for the hobby. tell me this: how much back pain do you have now at this point in your recovery after the accident?

I’ve installed the plug-in but not tried it yet. I like the fact you don’t need a widefield view. I now have a permanent setup with a pier in my observatory so hopefully won’t need to do this often but still have a second mount for portable use too. Be interesting to compare the different results from the 2 programs. I have SharpCap pro but not sure it will work with my scope - 425mm length.

Hello, Cuiv... I haven't used NINA 3-point polar alignment myself yet, but if I understand the geometry correctly, it should be more accurate when used a long way away from Polaris -- such as near the celestial equator. As I understand it, it is doing the same thing as drift alignment -- looking for non-parallelism of the telescope's RA motion with the actual lines of declination. So the farther you get away from Polar, the bigger this discrepancy will be, for any given polar alignment error.

Hello, I am trying to learn NINA but I am pulling my hair out. I am just trying to autofocus before I polar align and I can't even get an image of a star. I am using the ZWO ASI224MC on a Orion Starmax 127 mm Mak-Cass with no barlow. I manually slewed the HEQ5 Pro mount to Jupiter and using a 25mm eyepiece, set the focus manually. I slipped the belt back on the focuser without disturbing it and replaced the eyepiece with the camera. I go into NINA with a exposure of 3-10s and a gain of 150-300 and all I get is what appears to be amp glow. I know the camera works. Is it simply that my FOV is too small at 1540 mm focal length to capture any stars in the home position? The mount was polar aligned yesterday and not disturbed. Just trying to learn to use NINA. Any help would be appreciated.

I just left all at default and started NINA Polar Align here just north of Sydney Australia. Telescope rotated north then pointed to the ground. NCP???. Restarted this time remained pointing close SCP. Plate Solved but I seemed to spend a long time getting as close to zero error on both Alt and Az. PHD2 had a hard time keeping up with drift. Checked in Sharp Cap and was way out. Aligned in Sharp Cap PHD2 and guiding sweet as usual. To be fair there was a Update to NINA PA yesterday but I think I am used to Sharo Cap and have a years sybscription to go. Still like NINA for everything else.

Very good video. Thank you

I don't have n i n a but very interested in it. I watch you all the time. I'll be glad to see you on the Astro imaging channel September 19th.

you can use 'guiding assistant' in PHD2 to double check the real polar alignment error

I believe you can check polar align error with PHD2 ( I haven't done it), but may give an idea which process is more accurate.

Thank you for your time. I have a skywatcher star adventurer pro that is not a goto. Can I still use this method for polar alignment? Can move the camera to the 3 locations manually, if so how do I know where to face the camera on each occasion? Also can you clarify that this method uses imaging from the main camera, in my case a dslr, and not the guide camera? Thank you, I am new to this hobby and having issues with PA here in the Southern Hemisphere as my view of the octans is blocked. Cheers.

Great video! I have an asi120mm guide camera in the mini guide scope and was wondering if I could use this to do the polar alignment routine in NINA? I only use a DSLR and WO zenithstar for my imaging. Would I be better off to try and use the DSLR for this routine or the guide cam?

Thanks for the great videos !! Does it matter if the camera is at an angle ? I use N.I.N.A 'Framing' to frame my camera and adjust the angle. It seems to me that if the camera is at 0 degrees the measuarements might be better when doing the Polar Alignment. I've been getting some inconsistent results using N.I.N.As 3PPA. My mount is on a very heavy concrete pier. thanks, Monty

Hi to evrybody, is there in somewere the guide pdf about this plugin?

Do I have to re-park the Mount prior to running a sequence or can I just press play directly after polar alignment??

After this video I am going to try Nina

Looking forward to your Drift Alignment vs. N.I.N.A. vs. SharpCap analysis.

I tested the NINA 3point on my Esprit 100ED and SW AZEQ6 mount front inside my office with a 600mm square window view. Appeared to work. The error between apps, you have a lot of variables with differences between methods, for one 3point is using the main scope, for me sharpcap is using the guide scope. Then how well is your scopes aligned with the axis of rotation. Just a lot of compound error with setup and equipment. I suspect all methods get you close enough to get the job done. For me, less is more, being less fussing with multiple software packages and ease of use.

Well, TPPA works very good (sometimes) and it drives me nuts when it doesn't (two issues happen) and I don't understand why :/ Maybe you can share some light!!!!! My procedure is always the same: 1- set up my eq6-r well balanced, latitud gauge at 41º in my case and point roughly north (I can't see polaris) 2- slew to any visible and brightest star (I use synscan app for windows) connected via ASCOM to NINA 3- once the telescope is pointing roughly to the star, I start TPPA Then shit happens... - 1st error: it may decide not plate solve even if the image is clearly focused and stars pin point. It happens pointing to any star, I try different coordinates and fails.(looping) Any idea why this happens? I use ASTAP, tried 2,3,4,5,,,10 sec exposures; 100 /200 gain or more as I said, sometimes works, sometimes not.... - 2nd error: In case the plate solve works (cross fingers); Maybe I can get an error of 2º (not bad) oooooor a huge error of 20º.... and I'm like what? obviously I cant move the knobs with a 20º error, seriously what am I doing wrong? It's like a lottery LOL!!!!! I've been using TPPA for a while and some nights are successful, but when a 20º error appears or when it doesn't plate solve.... IT'S FRUSTRATING....and I repeat, I always do the same and same location; I would really appreciate some feedback. Thanks a lot!!

Hey Cuiv, do I have to use the guide scope or can I polar aline with the imiging tray of my 10" Newtonian ( it hase an off axis guider)? Thank you, Christian

Hello Cuiv, I tried this last night after going through the setup process with ASTAP, Astronmy and all the features for plate solving. Sad to say, I failed at it. During the second measurement point it told me to move the mount along the RA axis! 0/10 degress, could not figure out what that was supposed to be. I used my EQMOD mount controller to move the mount in different directions but it was never in the right spot, again, whatever that was supposed to be. I think for now I am just going to use my Stellarium and Backyard EOS to help with proper polar alignment and work on NINA as I have lots to learn with that. UGH...

Can this be set up to use one's local horizon settings (as in Sky Atlas) so that it points to a clear part of the sky? I have a building in the way with the default settings. Alternatively, how to change the default so that it stays above 35°?

Hi Cuiv, I am really a newbie doing my first steps with an EQ6 + SC 150 / 1500. As I do not see Polaris from my home location, I thought I’d give it a try with NINAs Polar Alignment. What happened is, with my initial alignment I am quite “off”, so I just getting trails on a 5 exposure. image. With those trails Plait solving does not work. What can I do?

Main camera or guide camera in NINA for polar aligniament??? Ty

It would seem having the tripod/mount exactly level would be very important, no? If so, what recommendations do you have for getting an exact level on the mount? Thanks!

Hey Cuiv, recently I've whached an interview on KZfaq with one of the founders of PHD2. He revealed shocking news regarding perfect polar alinement! He told, that PHD2 works best if you have an error of 2 to 10 arc seconds in your polar alinement! He also claimed, that there won't be any field rotation error in that range. I'm still shocked!😅 Greetings from Germany, Christian

Hi Cuiv. can you help or advise me with my EQ6-R PRO mount. When I slew or platesolve. The mount slews to the target and decides to slew way off of the target and then back to the target again and decides to slew back in the other direction and then back again, the same happens when I platesolve. It platesolves but because it slews a massive amount it takes 4 to 5 time to be exactly on point. This has only just started in the last month. Before it stopped at the target and platesolved with minor adjustments.

I compared some while ago the differences between polemaster, sharpcap and the drifttool in phd..drifting came out tops(no suprises there) then sharpcap ...they all differed to each other..this pluggin reminds me of ASPA that celestron uses.. didnt think much of that for imaging personally

Very interesting, it's free and already in nina, but is it really as precise as sharpcap's? And choosing points far away from each other makes the alignement more precise or does it not change anuthing?

Cuiv, interesting I tried the NINA PA routine last night. I can confirm that you do need to ensure mount limits are set to avoid pier strike :-(. I think the default angle of rotation between measurements is 10deg, however like you I changed that to 20deg as I was not convinced 10deg would be accurate enough. I ran the PA routine twice and then did a full sky model for my 10micron mount and like you found a 6min discrepancy between the two. However the second time I did the PA followed by another full sky model I got less than 30sec discrepancy. Interestingly I get the same inconsistencies when I use Sharp Cap and compare to the 10micron model. I have no idea why you get these random discrepancies, however I suspect user error is the most likely reason. One thing I don’t like about the NINA PA routine is having to enter the Initial pointing coordinates for the scope. Could make that more intuitive, perhaps allow you to the framing assistant or enter a catalogue number. That would make it easier to picture where you are pointing to. Finally I can see you struggle with the alt/az adjustments on you mount. I have not found a mount that has good smooth way of adjusting these setting on a mount. Small stepper motors on each axis would be idea and then NINA could fully automate PA!

I couldn't install it to my virtual windows on iMac. NINA works good but can't install that plugin. :(

Thank you :-) very nice !