{"id":6377,"date":"2025-04-05T21:55:45","date_gmt":"2025-04-06T02:55:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/?p=6377"},"modified":"2025-04-05T21:57:12","modified_gmt":"2025-04-06T02:57:12","slug":"telescope-dolly-alignment-jigs-to-repeatedly-return-to-polar-alignment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/05\/telescope-dolly-alignment-jigs-to-repeatedly-return-to-polar-alignment\/","title":{"rendered":"Telescope dolly alignment jigs to repeatedly return to polar alignment"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:39,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.thingiverse.com\\\/thing:7001874&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/closeup-feature-16x9-1-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-6378\" src=\"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/closeup-feature-16x9-1-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"584\" height=\"329\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/closeup-feature-16x9-1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/closeup-feature-16x9-1-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/closeup-feature-16x9-1-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/closeup-feature-16x9-1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/closeup-feature-16x9-1-2048x1152.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/closeup-feature-16x9-1-500x281.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 584px) 100vw, 584px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I want my telescope to be polar aligned when using it. To do this, I need to have the base accurately pointing exactly towards the north pole (in the Azimuth direction) and the Altitude of the wedge the same as my latitude. [This essentially means that I need the tripod base to be exactly level.]<\/p>\n<p>Getting the tripod level is easy, as I have 3 leveling bolts built into the ends of my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/05\/telescope-dolly-alignment-jigs-to-repeatedly-return-to-polar-alignment\/\">home built rolling dolly<\/a> and a bubble level on the telescope wedge.\u00a0 However, to get the AZ orientation correct, I need to reliably place at least 2 of the alignment bolts in the exact same spots on my patio every time I wheel the telescope outside to use it.<\/p>\n<p>To make this easy, I built these alignment jigs. They consist of a square piece of 2&#215;4 (3.5&#8243; by 3.5&#8243;) which rest inside a white square of gaffers tape. The square gaffers tape lets me put these wood base blocks at the exact same point each night. But, I really need to align the 3 leveling bolts, not just the wood blocks. So I <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thingiverse.com\/thing:7001874\">designed and printed two 3D printed<\/a> jigs. One to align the anti vibration puck to the center of the wood spacer block, and one to align the bolt to the center of the anti-vibration puck. The combination of jigs allows me to place the three leveling bolts (and hence, the dolly, and tripod) at the exact same location every night.<\/p>\n<p>You can watch the video below to see how this works in practice.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/0cnm3IOd4Ps?si=meUtiR5ghenNARGA\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I want my telescope to be polar aligned when using it. To do this, I need to have the base accurately pointing exactly towards the north pole (in the Azimuth direction) and the Altitude of the wedge the same as &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/05\/telescope-dolly-alignment-jigs-to-repeatedly-return-to-polar-alignment\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[155],"class_list":["post-6377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-projects","tag-lx200"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6377"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6380,"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6377\/revisions\/6380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}