Antelope Valley Astronomy Club -

Here's my drift alignment method - much easier to understand than most descriptions IMHO:

What you need (to have and/or understand)
-Reticle eyepiece, about 100x or greater. Nothing fancy, just a simple crosshair is fine. Lower powers work fine, too but you need to observe the drift longer for low power.
-Know how many reflections your optical path takes. A refractor with a star diagonal is 1, a cassagrain with a diagonal is 3. Newtonians are 2. This tells you which way to move the star when correcting (or which hand to use). If you have an odd number of reflections, use your left hand.
-Where your meridian and celestial equator intersect. The local meridian is easy. It passes directly overhead (zenith) and through the celestial poles. Stand with your back to Polaris and the meridian passes over your head and down to the southern horizon. Place your scope at zero declination and move it from side to side in Right Ascension. This is the celestial equator. In Palmdale it's around 56 degrees above the horizon when facing due south. (if you don't use right ascension and declination then this method is not for you )

Ok, we have our high power reticle eyepiece in and we're using a C11 with a diagonal. That's 3 reflections (odd) so we will use our left hand to guide our corrections (left hand, palm facing you). Let's go:

Azimuth Adjustment

1. Find a star near the intersection of the meridian and the celestial equator - you don't need to dial in the focus, in fact an out of focus star often is easier to see on the reticle.

2. Rotate the reticle so that the star moves along any one of the crosshairs when the scope is slewed in right ascension (R.A). If you are unsure which slew buttons are for R.A. then just turn off tracking temporarily and see which way the star drifts.

3. Let the mount track for about five minutes, longer if less than 100x is used. Ignore all drift along that crosshair (in R.A.). We only care if the star moves above or below the line.

-=-And here's the easy part, most methods tell you to observe whether or not the star has drifted north or south and looking through a cockeyed star diagonal that is often hard to tell!-=-

4. Taking your left hand (right hand for even reflections), hold it, palm facing you and the thumb pointing in the direction of drift. Your fingers indicate which way to move the star to correct for azimuth errors.

-=-for instance, asssume our crosshairs are oriented up, down, left and right when we look in the eyepiece. And that the laft-right line is our R.A. axis. If the star is above that line, then your thumb would point up and your fingers would point right.-=-

5. Move the mount IN AZIMUTH (not with hand pad but by rotating or adjusting the base), so that the star moves in the direction your fingers were pointing.

6. Re-center the star and repeat these steps until no motion above or below the line is noticed for five minutes.

Altitude Adjustment

1. Slew the scope to a star on the Celestial equator and about 20 degrees above the eastern horizon (if you need to use the western horizon, mount corrections will be reversed).

2. Again adjust a crosshair so that the star drifts in R.A. along it.

3. Let the mount track for about five minutes and observe the star drift above or below the line.

4. Simply adjust the mount in altitude (again, DON'T use the handpad) to place the star back on the line - if it drifts up, move it down and vice-versa. (if you had to use a western star, then move the mount so the star moves in the same direction as the drift).

5. Repeat until no movement is seen in five minutes.

6. Pour two fingers of Glenfiddich over ice and start your CCD program (the glare of the monitor will ruin you night vision anyway!)

Note: Levelling your mount is ideal but not really necessary, just get it close. Also, staring with a good rough polar alignment like through a polar scope really speeds the process.

This method is for the northern hemisphere, for the southern hemisphere... well consider moving north