[dmill1220]

HI Dave,

IT is important to stay within 5 Degrees of the Meridian and the Celstial EQ, and as close to the eastern Horizon as possible, for the Declination adjustment, again within 5 degrees, if your star drifts past this then find a new one to continue the drift process

Yep! that sounds right!
The jiggling around is due to atmospheric turbulence, and any slight breeze or wind, The left to right dancing around is to be ignored, it's the periodic error that is inherent with all RA axis worm gears.

The key to remember here is, that when you adjust your EQ wedge, you move the wedge, to move that star in the direction of the drift, that is seen on your live view screen, this will involve you making adjustments in RA and Dec with your hand controller to keep it centered in the live view screen in between adjustments.

You must pause for a while between adjustments, what you're looking for is no up or down drift, if it moves up or down but then gets right back on the cursor and its consistent, then its adjusted good enough for the next axis.

Once that star stays consistently on the cursor for at least 3 minutes even with a little back and forth and up and down motion, move on to the next axis. what matters is that you stop the progressive movement of the star up or down, off the live view screen.

Ignore the left to right drift! for each axis!, Once your done, and you install the focal reducer along with the DSI, any tracking errors or PE, will be much less pronounced due to the lower focal length of the Focal reducer.

I use this method to avoid a long drift alignment processes, and to get good goto accuracy, When you goto align your scope with a DSI @ F-10 the accuracy of the goto will be much better, then when you install your focal reducer, it should put most objects in the field of view of the DSI, if not just calibrate your goto from object to object.

Any left to right drift should be repetitive, you will see the centroid drift out then back again. This is OK, with the DSI, it will throw out and not stack any subs that show the drift, since the drift is periodic, the DSI software will discard those subs and not stack them. it has to meet a quality criteria that you have set this is done after an initial average count is performed when you first start taking your images.

I use a count of ten with a minimum of 30% quality for each sub.

It is normal to see the star bounce around a bit at F/10

Dennis