Ad Astra Observatory

I have been troubleshooting the guiding in the mount for a year now, and I think that I have it down to one of a very few remaining possibilities:

1) flex in the guidescope focuser (which I just found and patched recently)
2) balance problems (I have balance neutral at the moment, but the mount is set up for making it heavy to the east if I need it)
3) cables catching (I don’t think this is it; I went through with Velcro wraps recently and think I’m good here)
4) polar alignment (I am awful at polar alignment, and there might be a residual problem here)
5) periodic error (I have essentially done zero worm tuning)

Honestly, I think that periodic error (or, more accurately, worm tuning) is going to turn out to be my biggest current error. I get essentially no drift in Dec (which I would attribute to a poor polar alignment). Any “macro” problem like focuser flex or some “physically unable to turn” problem would show up as more major than what I’m seeing, I think.

And the worm is an unknown quantity. So, I’m going to spend some time, figuring out how to adjust the worm, and see if I can get cleaner guiding results.