Progression and successes

One of the problems with the Celestron system is backlash in the gears. That's where there's a certain amount of slack in the gear train which appears to the user as a delay between the button being pushed and the scope starting to slew. Having said that, backlash isn't a problem, if you do the alignment right.

With the default settings, you need to make the same movements to complete the alignment as the scope does when it moves to a target. This means the final alignment movements must be up and to the right. If you overshoot, go back the other way past the centre point and then re-centre the star. Originally I had been aligning down and to the right which meant that gotos ended up with the target at the bottom of the field of view on the supplied 25mm Plossl. Aligning up and right placed the target in the centre of the FOV. Much better. So much so that I was able to switch to the 15mm eyepiece I bought with the scope and find all of the objects in the centre of the smaller FOV.

An hour later, running around the sky looking at a range of objects in different parts of the sky, GOTOs were still amost centred, drifting perhaps a bit low and to the left but not even close to the edge of the FOV. A most satisfying evenings viewing.