The continuous developing of new astrophotography programs allows nowadays many way to perform Polar Alignment even via software.

The benefits of making this procedure by using a software are both economic and practical at the same time. Practical because allow an accurate Polar Alignment, economic because can be accomplished through free softwares and without requiring Polar Scope or external electronic devices.

This tutorial explain the three star polar alignment routin. This procedure can be accomplished with the N.I.N.A. Three Star Polar Alignment plugin (for windows users) and Ekos (for Mac/Linux/RPi users).

Even if the hardware/softwares are different the procedure is basically the same:

With the mount at the Home position (telescope pointing to the North and Counterweight down position), click on the play button.

The mount slew to the first target, take an image and solve

After the first plate solve the mount slew to the second target, take a new image and solve, finally slew to the third target, take the image and solve.

At the end of the procedure the software shows the PA error that can be corrected with the Alt / Lat mount knobs. After the correction repeat the procedure as long as the PA error get as low as possible.