Probably late to the party, seeing as Brian Valente started uploading tutorial videos on the subject.? Thought I'd share here in case others might find the information useful.
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I use Ekos/KStars, since I can run it on a cheap passively cooled Raspberry Pi4.? More powerful PCs have active cooling on their CPUs, and I was finding the condensation on cold days had a tendency of gumming up delicate notebook PC fans.? Astro cams use active cooling too, but I find they are better designed to handle cold weather.
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A few months ago (March 2021), KStars made an improvement to their polar alignment tool.? Using plate solving and some spherical geometry, the tool allows you to polar align anywhere in the sky.
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The tool takes three images at different RA rotations to determine your polar alignment error.? It then asks you to select an anchor star that you use to reposition your polar alignment using your alt/az knobs.? You can use the tool at any declination in the sky.?
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I can't see Polaris from my usual observation location, and in the past I've used drift alignment in PHD2.? PHD2 drift align works well, but you need to drift for a significant amount of time to get accurate results.? I'm able to get good polar alignment much faster with 2-3 iterations of the KStars tool.
Thought others might find this info useful,
Dwight
