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 :)