Good Polar alignment

[swag72]

I keep seeing that in order to get good guiding, you need to have a good polar alignment. I am looking at getting into guided, but am wondering whether I have a good polar alignment.

So, how do you know if it's good or bad? When I 1 star align I often find that I'm not far out from the recommended star - Is that a measure? When I use goto from there I am generally bang on target - Does that mean my polar align was good?

Silly question, but I wondered how you can tell.

[Starblazer]

Best way to tell would be take an image with the motors running and if you are getting startrailing in anything under 1 min then your out. Apparently good polar alignment and drift alignment can get you some really good unguided time....

[themos]

Mount a camera on it with a telephoto lens, point it towards the North Star, take a picture, rotate the RA axis by 90 degrees, take another and you can calculate your error from those two pictures.

[E621Keith]

Here is a link to a very good video tutorial on how to do drift alignment.

Andy's Shot Glass - Drift Alignment for Amateur astrophotography,ccd, Neutonians and Refractors, amateur astronomy