Polar Alignment Question

[muletopia (Chris)]

Hello Folks,
I have no regrets about not following the general advice in this thread, for my first real telescope I bought a Takahashi Mewlon 210 and put it on a a
HEQ 5 pro mount. The Skywatcher tripod was quite useless so the mount was put on a very solid pier bolted to a suitably large mass of concrete.
Iterating through the mount's three star and polar alignment routines the PA error has been reduced to 4 and 11 seconds in azimuth and elevation respectively. This means that mount goes to objects fairly accurately and faint objects found in the main scope at 100 magnification.
(Omega Centauri at 400 times using a Losmandy G11 on an excellent winter night was a sharp well resolved treat to behold).

For the alignment a 20 mm reticle eyepiece was used, the centre square of which is about 12 seconds wide (Granted the 2415 mm focal length the magnification is 120.75.) and the alignment stars were defocussed so that they just fitted into that square and all final placements were with N and E movements.

I now want to do drift alignment to reduce the PA error.

My question, what sort of drift rate might I expect in declination? This would tell me how patient I will need to be.

I hope this not a silly beginners question.
Cheers
Chris

[andyc (Andy)]

I don't know the answer to your question, but are you using the scope for visual or photography? And if photography are you planning to use an autoguider? That might help with thoughts of (a) if you need to be even more accurate? and (b) if better people than me can help you get closer alignment!

I do a bit of AP with an HEQ5pro, and generally if I can get the alignment to something like as good as yours (thought I'm using the tripod and taking the setup down each time), then I'm satisfied. If I'm trying to find objects for visual or spectroscopy, then I'm happy if the mount will regularly put the objects in the middle of the field, and for photography, the autoguider will handle the errors if the alignment is good enough... though my focal length is a lot shorter than yours so the tolerances will be very different (ie more generous for me!). Sorry I can't help more specifically.