RA Motor Drive - help!

Hello all, can anybody be of help?, i'm into piggyback astrophotography at the moment using my Celestron C8 SCT, but all my images produced generate a 'spike' from each bright star in the image, no matter what lens or film i use. This spike is always produced in the same direction on each shot. I've looked over my camera, all seems ok, but i have a strong suspicion (and have been told) that the RA Motor drive is 'skipping' as i take my shots. How can i take a look at this?, have any of you seen this before, can it be fixed. I've enclosed a shot of saturn near M1, ok, the tracking is slightly off due to inaccurate polar alignment, bit thesespikes will not go away!!, is the motor 'skipping'?

Thanks for your help, Keith....

Attached Image:

Bill,

Please explain how you came to your conclusions. It sounds like you know what you are talking about.

In my novice view, there are two problems with the picture. Polar alignment is not one of the problems. If it were polar alignment, something would be dead on--and everything else would rotate around it.

As for the spikes, I agree it may be some kind of reflection, but I would guess it is simply the initial shake of the the camera--the brightest things can be exposed and leave their mark on the film, and then as the camera settles, they are still making their mark on the film--but in a different place. And they settle, burn out the exposure, while the rest of the dimmer stars leave their trails. The dim stars are not bright enough to show in this initial streak.

The other error I see is that the right ascension speed is not dead on. It seems like the mount did not follow exactly like it should. It is probably not periodic error, (but just may be) because it does not come back to where it should be--it just progressively moves thorugh the exposure.

Alex