Synscan polar alignment tips?

[pipnina]

I spent 30 minutes trying to get my HEQ5 polar aligned tonight (before astro dark thankfully). But I only managed to get it to within about 2 minutes alt, maybe 8 minutes az. and of course there was some uncertainty since I didn't get my 2-star alignment perfect (maybe average variance of 1.5mins). Somewhat limited by my camera only allowing grid to be shown at lowest zoom in live view.

I think this is a major part of why I can only achieve 1min subs without trailing, how can I get my polar alignment precise (i.e. sqrt(az*az+alt*alt) < 1 min) in decent time? Is this doable via synscan method, or should I be focusing on the more traditional polar scope method?

The other possible cause of my drift could be bad weight balancing, but since the HEQ5 is still stiff enough to resist small imbalances I get it to feel like there isn't any particular balance issue when rocking it on both axis individually.

Any tips appreciated

Thanks

[michael8554]

If you had guiding then 5 arcmins would be sufficient, but as you're not then drift alignment would be the best method to get better than that, but you should look at your PEC too.

Michael

[pipnina]

11 hours ago, michael8554 said:

If you had guiding then 5 arcmins would be sufficient, but as you're not then drift alignment would be the best method to get better than that, but you should look at your PEC too.

Michael

I'll have a read of the manual for drift alignment and PEC. Cheers