Assuming you can find the lost widget this is what to expect from the NEQ6 once you’ve modded it. This is the unguided performance. In this case the exposures are 60s so the graph covers around an hour. The Dec drift is due to polar misalignment (this is a “portable” mount) but the 8 minute periodic error in RA is clear and it has a peak-to-peak amplitude of around 15 arcsec (the scale is pixels which are 2.1″). It is very smooth too and guides out easily if you can be bothered. I don’t bother and just rely on relatively short exposures (60s) and stacking. That is a pretty good approach for CMOS sensors anyway and makes for a very easy imaging setup. This plot corresponds to the performance obtaining this image.
