Altair (nasa image) 

I figured out how the red dot finder can be put to use (it took some adjusting). Incidentally this is the first night of partially visible stars across the yorkshire skies, and its still misty as hell. which leaves me somewhat concerned about dew formation.

So this is the new method Ive been following up to now. The align process is too flipping noisy in easy mode, in the other mode, 1 star two star, I figure I should really be outside and using a tripod, so no autoaligning.. I just use plain old visual pattern recognition.

I choose a bright star, observe. try and find it on stelarium, then I find its neighbours, then its a stop at wikipedia, then any nasa pages linked from it.
Tonighs star is altair about 17 light years away, and the twelth brightest star in the sky. it rotates once every ten hours, at the speed of 470,000 miles per hour, compared to our sun which rotates every 30 days thats pretty fast and the forces at play change its shape.