February was a bit of a bust due to rain and the month mostly being cloud covered. I mostly spent it reacquainting myself with my equipment since it had been a while since I was able to setup and observe.

Once March hit, we started getting some nice clear nights so I decided it would be nice to take the 61mm out for a spin. Unfortunately my last two attempts were mired by a drift I couldn't figure out. I was thinking it could have been my telescope balance since it does change a bit when you set focus since the focus tube pulls away from the scope but no amount of balancing was fixing the issue. I then thought it could be due to my cheap EQ mount but remembered how I wasn't getting any drift when using my 8" on the same mount. Long story short, after a couple of nights of trying everything, I realized I had accidentally turned off Align Frames in SharpCap and that was causing my images to show drifting after about 2 minutes.

I've discovered that as long as I have a pretty decent polar alignment I don't really need to do more than one star alignment to get going.

Of course I'm just doing EAA so your milage may vary but once I am polar aligned all I need to do is slew to a target, plate-solve and sync to center the object and then the following slews are pretty much in my FOV pretty close to center. I can start tracking the target right away without having to do multiple alignments. As I slew to other targets, I initiate a sync and that adds to my alignment points in EQMOD.

I am pretty sure this is common knowledge for more seasoned observers out there but I have stopped browsing the forums lately and things are just coming to me naturally as I experience them. More on that below.

I don't know why so many people have so many issues on the forums and groups with alignment. It's been one of the easiest things I have had to do in this hobby and I rarely ever have an issue. It is also one of those subjects that people write volumes on in the forums and groups and made me believe it's one of the hardest things to overcome in this hobby. I think most people over complicate it and even some people throw too much technology into it. I am pretty much up and running in about 10 minutes after initial setup. Sure, somebody will say - "Yeah well I have this gadget that does all the thinking for me in 2 minutes" ... but I also see you on the forums whining about why said gadget isn't working right for days and days and days :)

I think if you are just getting started, it's okay to participate in a few forums and Facebook groups to get you going if you don't have anybody in person to ask questions to, but once you get going I think the best thing to do for yourself is ignore the groups and forums for as much as possible and just learn by experimenting on your own. Aside from the monotony of the same questions being posted over and over by newcomers to these places, you get bogged down with a lot of people just telling you how it's supposed to be done or not done or how you're not doing it right.

I don't have much to show from last night's session since I didn't have much of a plan, I just wanted to confirm I had fixed my "drifting" issue. But here is a quick shot of M97 and M108 using my ASI533MC.