What's wrong with this pic?

Thanks for post but I understood that the drift method is one of the most accurate methods... just very laborious!!!! Anyone any comment???

Drift alignment is the most accurate method of polar alignment - depending on how you do it. If you do it by eye alone, that may not get you very close even for wide field imaging. You can go one step further with an illuminated reticle eyepiece - that'll get you close enough for widefield shots and short exposure narrow field shots.

I guess the ulitmate would be to drift align with a narrow field imager/CCD.

I have drift aligned my setup to the point I get no shift in images of 90 seconds plus at a FOV of 21 arcmin square.

So, drift alignment is best but yes, it can be laborious depending on how you do it.

There are some software packages out there that can help but I'm not sure of their accuracy compared to drift alignment.

Dave

I have drift aligned my setup to the point I get no shift in images of 90 seconds plus at a FOV of 21 arcmin square.

Wish I had you patience Dave. My polar alignment is close but nowhere near perfect since I have noticed field rotation on long imaging sessions. When I get really bored of imaging(not) I shall refine the polar alignment :x

Wish I had you patience Dave.

Tell me about it... It probably took about 4 sessions each an hour long to get it so the stars didn't budge for 10 minutes or more. But that still only gets me at most probably 180 seconds unguided exposures. I shouldn't complain though. 180 seconds is all I need really.

Dave