Ad Astra Observatory

A,

I need to figure out if the trend is in positive RA or negative RA. I
know it’s in RA, but I’m awful at figuring out which is which.

Anyway, I wonder if the pointing model is correcting for a poor polar
alignment?
Also, I wonder a lot about balance. There always seems to be a large

amount of “close enough” with getting things balanced, especially in RA.
I wonder if that’s throwing things off.
I wonder if I should train the PEC. Also, I wonder if I should train the
PEC using the autoguider.
I wonder about my guider setup in Max. I have tried a variety of
aggressiveness settings in Max. I am guiding at 0.3x sidereal (according
to the mount). I have set the aggressiveness in X (RA) to 4, 6,7, and

10, with more or less the same results — strings of 0.07s with about
one 0.32 or so every 5 seconds or so. When I set X aggro to 0, the error
jumps to 0.58 or more and sits there. So the guiding is doing
*something*. But it doesn’t keep the target from drifting, call it 3 or
4 arcminutes an hour (M51 had moved by ~half its height (the galaxies
are oriented N/S although I usually see them oriented E/W) in an hour
and a half). That’s a lot of drift. I mean, not enough to cause much

rotation (or at least Max can deal with the rotation), but seriously.
That’s a lot of drift.

I wish I knew how to characterize the PE of the mount. Do you know how
to do this?

helllllp

J