[g__day (Matthew)]

I just wonder if I did something really dumb (very possible). I did a state change from polar unaligned to aligned - but kept telling it to align on 3 stars.

I tried last night re-building my Maxpoint sky model and by the fourth star everything was really wierd - so I re-started it all and aligned on one star - great - then I went to star two - almost centre of the CCD chip - but when I aligned on this or the next star - it kept on saying just one star align (its supposed to reject a new alignment star if DEC hasn't changed or if the target is > 10 degrees out of position) I say my targeting was well within 5 arc minutes or better...

I have to read the manual on alignment when you're in polar aligned mount mode. Tracking didn't seem to bad and pointing was pretty darn good too. Maybe in polar aligned mode you can only align on one star - you just have to get date, time and location very accurate - which is no problem for a fixed pier.

Of course by then it was 2am - I did a few 240 second shots of Orion and there seems to be minimal if any star trails - with no guiding - then of course clouds rolled in!

So next good viewing - I think I'll stick with a one star alignment - build a 40 star sky model, then test pointing and tracking with and without guiding thoroughly!

Matt