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Originally Posted by silv
-reasonable south-pole alignment with a compass on my iphone along the concrete slabs seam of the driveway,
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From my personal experience, this won't give you an accurate polar alignment. This is most likely causing your three-star alignment problems.
The iPhone compass is very susceptible to interference (including the mount itself!), and at best you may end up within a few degrees. Lately, I've found that eyeballing the Southern Cross and Pointers can be more accurate than my iPhone compass for initial alignment. My bulky handheld marine grade GPS, on the other hand, has a much more reliable digital compass.
Note that for imaging, you'll want accurate polar alignment - e.g. using drift alignment, or software such as Align Master. I know that the conventional wisdom says alignment doesn't matter too much for DSLR wide fields,
in my experience I've found that it helps a LOT.
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-the bubble scale almost centered
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The bubble level on the EQ5/6 mounts are notoriously poorly aligned straight from the factory... on both EQ6s I've used they weren't even remotely close - after very careful polar alignment, it turns out the centre of the bubbles were actually outside the marked circle.