This is how I align and focus my Celestron CPC800 for an evening of Electronic Assisted Astronomy (EAA). As I don't have an observatory, I need to carry out this same process every time I observe.

1. Place the CPC800 outside with the scope pointing North and horizonal. Just a rough initial alignment is needed as we are going to use plate solving.

2. I then retire to my office inside, and start the alignment procedure. The software to control the telescope is CPWI 2.4.3 beta 11.

3. The telescope is connected to a laptop in a plastic box below the telescope (i5 8th Gen, 16GB RAM, 1TB NMVE drive). The USB 2 cable connects the laptop to the Celestron Electronic Focuser. This in turn is connected to the base of the CPC800, in order to control the scope.

4. The camera, an Altair Astro 294c colour camera, is connected to the same laptop via an USB 3.0 cable.

5. Alignment uses CPWI to control and model the scope's position. SharpCap (4.1 beta) is used to manually align on objects and build the CPWI model. Platesolving software, ASTAP & ASPS, is used to centre objects in the FOV.

Focusing After or even during the alignment process I will focus the scope using ShaprCap's Multi Star FWHM Focusing tool.

The whole process, when I'm not wittering on, takes around 10 minutes. After that I am ready for another night of exciting observing.

Have fun!