Polar alignment
Pointing the mount's axis at the pole, and finding out how far off it really was. Oldest first, so it reads from the first try to the latest.
First light: the Ring and the Dumbbell
The telescope's first evening out, a knock against its own handset, and two planetary nebulae before midnight.
About 9° out, measured from the Andromeda framesnoted
Polar alignment, Andromeda, and half an hour pointed at a tree
The polar axis went from six degrees out to 0.2, the Andromeda Galaxy filled the frame, and then the motors quietly stopped.
About 6° out to 0.2°, as the software then saidnoted
Andromeda from both sides of the sky, the Pleiades and Saturn
The polar alignment I thought was 0.2 degrees was really 3, the camera's short exposures got fixed, and an hour and a half of Andromeda came out of two runs stitched across the meridian.
About 3° out, corrected to 0.1°noted
The focuser focuses itself, and the Triangulum Galaxy through a gap in the cloud
First night with the motor focuser doing the work, polar alignment from 8 degrees out to 0.3, a start on the North America Nebula, then haze, and the Triangulum Galaxy after midnight.
8.3° out to 0.3°noted
Mapping the garden, and finding home
The telescope measured my garden's skyline by itself before dark, the true home position turned out to be ten degrees from where I had been setting it, Tabby's star got its first night, and then the camera started misbehaving and a neighbour's bonfire finished the night.
1° out to 0.5°noted