Just starting out -need to sort out my polar alignment

[oceanheadted]

I'm just starting out in this deep sky photography lark (my second post on Deep sky imaging). Spent a fairly frustrating evening last night trying to get my polar alignment sorted. Just as I was getting somewhere the cloud rolled in an put an end to my evening.

Also my Vixen GP mount wouldn't do anything more than a 1 star align. I aligned on Vega, then went to Altair (which always seemed a about a degree short) and it did another one star alignment. (it was doing a 2 star one before). Are you better off doing the alignment with an eyepiece than through ths DSLR?

Both exposures 30 seconds on a Canon EOS 300 D @1600 ASA. C80-ED with WOFFII, unguided.

Here's the results..

[Psychobilly]

An illuminated Reticule EP is very handy for alignment i used to use a 12mm one..

I use a reddot finder for coarse, then With a DLSR i use the center focus zone dot for alignment as a glorified reddot and then used the image from the guidecam with a bullseye overlay in PHDGuide for the actual alignment...

I don't have to do this very often though only when I forget to park the scope at the end of an evening and just hit the power switch...

Peter..

[oceanheadted]

Back from my hols last night and there were clear skies and frosty condtions. Improved my polar alignment and managed to go to 53 second subs. I'm a bit disappointed the red isn't coming through very strong, but is it because I'm using an unmodded camera?