Sounds like a perfectly normal first night of drift aligning. My diagnosis is that you are perfectly normal and healthy
.
I can't add much that the guys haven't mentioned already, except the use of a barlow with the illuminated EP is fine for getting your alignment more accurate.
Mike, if you are like me, you
will waste a couple of nights drift aligning to start with, but I have no doubt you'll soon get a handle on it. With practice it doesn't take too long at all. For example, at Lostock I think I spent 30 minutes drift aligning, then did a three start align and the goto was accurate to within the FOV of my 10mm EP (203x) for rest of the weekend.
I'll offer a few points as food for thought - some you'll already know I'm sure
...
- Setup the tripod level and aligned to true south with the compass (watch the magnetic interference as already mentioned!).
- Check your azimuth adjustment is about centre before you put the head on just to make sure you've got adjustment both ways.
- If you are always using the scope about the same latitude, your altitude adjustments should be pretty minor (you might be able to get away with little or no adjustment depending on the accuracy you need).
- To align the reticle for drift aligning, centre the star in the reticle, slew in RA only to the edge of the FOV, then rotate the EP till the reticle hairs are on the star again. Then slew back to centre to check the star stays on the reticle wire.
- Make your initial adjustments big. I usually start off adjusting (and slewing in RA (only) to keep the star in the FOV until the star is almost out of the FOV in dec... then I re-centre the star and check drift. Keep doing this till you go too far (i.e. drift is the opposite way). Needless to say, you make smaller adjustments after that!
I found the biggest time waster when learning to drift align was just making little adjustments. Start big, to get into the ball park first!
- Once you've got the azimuth right, do the altitude/latitude or vice versa and then go back and check.
- If you need more accuracy, use a barlow to fine tune, and/or learn to use the drift explorer in K3
- it's just the wasp's nipples! I was sure 1ponders was going to write a tutorial on this
... I think I even offered to help write the text if he needed the help...
Al.