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I had another opportunity last weekend to practice this, had a clear night all night and was outside with my mount from 5pm till after midnight.
I started out looking at magnetic south and attempting to eyeball it as best I can, I then moved it 11deg East to attempt to get a closer alignment to SCP (I was obviously still off, but fairly close). I used the latitude of my current location to guess what Alt I needed to set my mount too, again eyeballing it on the mount measurements (close but not quite) - Thank you from everyone on the tips and detailed explanations to help my understanding.
I attempted to use sharpcap however when trying to polar align it would keep crashing, I gave up with that application.
I also recently purchased Astrophotography tool which I love, it has a tool for focus assisting as well as ability to control DSLR camera Lenses which I found fantastic for fine focusing (it has 3 levels of speeds for focusing).
Using APT I can use my camera live view to see what I'm looking at, my current south viewing is so light polluted with orange industrial lights that I cant see any stars unless I take an exposure. I was able to take 5 minute exposures at 500mm f6.7 to get an idea on star arch to identify where SCP was. This took a bit of time, but I was able to physically see where I needed to be aiming at, APT had crosshairs that helped me align the centre of the sensor to the SCP (also with magnification tools). I adjusted the Alt and Az until I was aiming at my best guess on what it was.
I was pretty happy with the outcome as I was able to track the Carina at 500mm f6.7 unguided for about 90seconds, still had some star trailing but otherwise wasn't bad.
My obvious issue further from this was the fact that using the camera lens connected via a tripod vixen dovetail screw (from a normal camera tripod and is about 5cm long) is that this means the camera isn't at the mount centre axis meaning I'm polar aligned above the centre axis (and also possibly not straight in RA at the camera), as I started taking photos of objects further away from SCP I found trailing got worse.
Thanks to Manav (Yugant) on the night for giving me advice.
Today I received a QHY Polemaster which I'm really excited to use (pictured below), it was a bit costly, but in my current situation its the best option to ensure I have accurate polar alignment which I really need until I can auto-guide.
Thanks for the help, hopefully I'll be able to progress and improve and show that I'm progressing with some images.
-Adri-
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