This is the lower right corner of an image of M 33, the
same area that I had shot 3 nights earlier and that showed
terribly elongated stars (until about an hour after the scope
turned "upside down" after crossing the meridian, at which point
the stars became remarkably round; see the Oct 29 folder in this
gallery).

This time, the stars early in the evening were excellent -
round all the way across the image (this was 2 1/2 hours
earlier than I had started the M33 images on the prior night).
However, after testing in different areas of the sky, with
increasingly problematic results, I returned to M33 and checked
it again, and now this image too showed elongated stars in the right
part of the frame, a significant decrease in star quality compared
to the first image of the night. I did more testing,and finally
returned to M33 about 3 hours after the first shot. This
final frame shows considerable elongation of the stars, comparable to
what I had found with the earlier night's attempt to image this object.

The conclusion would seem to be that there is something in the scope that
is slowly shifting with time as the scope is pointed toward the sky (and
something that is fixed as the pull of gravity shifts when the scope
tracks past the meridian). See also the "Time Comparison" image earlier in this
gallery for a similar, though less dramatic, shift. It would seem that the
time has come to return this scope for examination and, if possible, repair.

All of these images are cropped at 100%. For all of them, the focus was
checked and adjusted immediately prior to taking the image.