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John,
Its always a bit difficult especially in the beginning.
I think, as you said, its a bit like detective work.
In this case the process is one of elimination.
To get close to identifying the cause you must be able to rule out certain things.
As a start I would spend quite a bit of time on balancing the equipment and then spend a lot of time doing drift alignment so that you get to a point where a star will move back and forth without drift for at least 5 minutes.
Once balancing and drift alignment are very good, then autoguide to se what hapens
its thgen a process of checking and tweaking autoguiding settings etc. towards an optimal image with decreasing traillling.
these are the first investigative steps I'd recommend.
As it is the images you post show trailling that could be due to a) poor balancing (ensure balanced with a very slight imbalance on the rising end- eg counterweight shaft weighs a bit more if imaging East and the counterweight bar is progressively lifting up over time-this ensures consistent pressure on the worm))
b) poor polar alignment (hence the need for drift alignment) or
c) tracking settings requiring adjustments (no point doing this until the other two are resolved)
hope this helps
frank
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