Rough Polar alignment - Southern Hemisphere

[style121]

Cloudy skies in my area are really getting me down, so I can't get out there experiment. Still haven't managed to get in a session with the mount aligned yet as i've had such limited time available to do it. But I though about a quick and dirty to way to do a rough polar alignment the other night, so I set up my camera and tripod, and worked out more or less the pole would be.

So could I theoretically just do a rough alignment like this by pointing my scope in the same direction as the centre of origin for the star trails, and have a good enough alignment for tracking?

See the attached pic from my back garden.

[kens]

I can't imagine its any more accurate than the 4 1/2 time the length of Crux method or such like, as I think you are suggesting eyeballing the alignment. Unless you adjust the mount and take another shot and repeat until the pole is centred in the picture. And that wouldn't be much easier than drift alignment which is very accurate.

For a rough alignment, use a compass and inclinometer to set azimuth and altitude respectively.

[sgazer]

If found using drift alignment works well as I'm in the south too. Although now I have celestron starsense, which has an align routine.