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How to find the South Celestial Pole

With a lot of the telescopes and mounting systems, the most important part of aligning them is making sure that one part of the set-up is in line with celestial south.

While the celestial South Pole does not have an easily visible star located on it, it is still relatively easy to find.

The first step is to locate the Southern Cross (Crux). Once you’ve done this, you need to draw an imaginary line along the longest arm of the Southern Cross about 4.5 times the length of this arm. This takes you right to the celestial South Pole.

While the star sigma Octantis actually sits very near to the celestial South Pole, this star is so dim that trying to use this as a guide point is relatively pointless.
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