Polar Alignment Scope

My new mount (Celestron CG-5) is nice and light, but it didn't come with a polar alignment scope.  Basically it's a telescope that helps you align the axis with the NCP (North Celestial Pole) rather than Polaris (the north star).  Polaris swings around in a circle each night and with this you can aim at the actual NCP and get better alignment.  Sure I'd like an autoguider, but polar alignment is the first step.

I ordered it a few weeks ago and because Amazon has the product listed wrong (without mentioning whether it's a CG-4 or CG-5 scope) I received the wrong one.  Called High Point Scientific and they graciously shipped me the right one and a label to ship the wrong one back.  Fast forward to this afternoon and you'd find me out in the backyard attempting to get it aligned properly.  I have a suspicion that since it was such a booger to get right the last mount I had wasn't aligned correctly.  Calibration is the name of the game in telescope mounts, so I spend about 2 hours learning everything I could about polar scopes.  I took mine apart (due to screwing the alignment screw in too far and having it drop into the scope itself).  I discovered that the focus on the star schematic is to some degree in line with focusing on something fairly distant.  I don't know if you've ever tried it, but focusing on something tall at like 45° is pretty hard unless you have an Empire State Building laying around.

Anyway - I finally got it aligned (3 screws w/ teeny allen heads ) and now it stays true whether the scope holder is on the left or right (and all points in between).  Doesn't mean I'll always get good alignment, but at least I can't blame the polar scope.

Clear Skies :)

Sword of Orion

Last night was my first time using the new scope with the camera (and didn't have the EP protector between the camera and EP adapter).  I'm still working on the other pics, but I had to post this one.  The Sword of Orion contains Orion's Nebula.  This is basically the same as the pic on the last post only much closer and a stacked version of 6 shots.  I did 20 second exposures at 1600 (using the scope as a lens, so no f stop).  I was in the front yard with tons of lights all around me, so I was pretty blown away to get this good of a shot.

Sword of Orion

Betelgeuse (bright star on the left shoulder of Orion)

Moon (about 3 exposures stacked for detail)

Flame Nebula next to Alnitak (the left most star in Orion's Belt)
top is mine and bottom is an example