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Rob
Use a star that’s closer to the south meridian line and higher in altitude ( ideally the polar alignment Star should be between 40deg and 65deg in Altitude)
If your using Hadar and Atria ( I used Alpha Centauri or Rigel Centaurus and Atria last week ) use Hadar as your polar alignment Star. Both alignment stars obviously must be on the same side of the meridian
Also are you using Software and laptop to polar align or at the scope using an illuminated reticle eye piece in the focuser ? Either way defocus your alignment Star a little bit into a small donut to achieve more centering accuracy. Anything below 1 arc minute error using the Synscan routine is pretty good. Generally I’m around 20 to 40 arc seconds on both Alt and Az but make sure error on Alt and Az are reasonably close ( not like 1.80 Alt and 0.20 Az )
Sounds like your on the right track
For visual use you only need to get error down to a few arc minutes ( depending on your focal length and magnification) But for imaging you will need to get down to 0.30 to 0.50 arc minutes but not critical as your autoguiding will correct the remainder
Cheers
Martin
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