I just purchased this new Meade eyepiece with double cross-hairs for drift alignment imprinted on the reticule. It has several other lines and graphs but I will deal with those later.
I setup last night in my backyard, first performing a polar alignment using my mounts polarscope. I use to think using the polarscope alone with sufficient for astro-photography. Over 2 whole wasted nights of streaked pictures, I learned this was not so. Using just a polarscope for general observing is ok, but not for pictures! I did not have much luck using the drift alignment method last night. I started by looking for a decently bright star at my southern horizon. Because of trees and my house I have a limited area to pull off a polar alignment using the NCP and getting a decent look to my south because of the house. I was able to find a few faint stars to try with the new eyepiece somewhere around the celestial equator and the southern meridian. So with the RA tracking motor turned off, I let the star drift through the eyepiece and adjusted the eyepiece so that the star ran parallel between the cross-hair. It didn't take long, maybe 2-3 minutes, to see the star drift off to one side. I made an adjustment to my azimuth(can't remember which direction), and tried again. I tried a few more times with no real big success. It got rather late so I gave up after about an hour. All is not lost though and spirits are still high because I came away with some real experience in drift alignment.
I don't mind cloudy nights as much right now because with even a few breaks in the clouds I am able to practice aligning the mount and scope!
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