In case anyone else is searching for this, here are some of my observations on getting a good alignment from a Celestron NexStar telescope. It's really not hard at all if you know the tricks. There's a lot of good information about these telescopes on Michael Swanson's NexStar Site, and the guides there are worth a read. But here's the 60 second cheat sheet.
1. Get a decent, cheap bullseye level -- the telescope comes with one but it's tiny, and stupidly has a thick, uneven sticker on the bottom. Put the level on the top of the battery door and quickly level tripod.
2. Make sure the OTA (the telescope part) is mounted on the arm almost, but not quite all the way towards the back end of the mounting bracket. About 2 cm of the bracket is visible towards the back of the mounting arm.
3. Turn on, and enter the location and time. Get pretty close with the location (i.e. just "Palo Alto, CA" is fine). Be exact with the time -- one minute off seems to cause problems.
4. Align on the first star -- I alway use Polaris because I can. Make sure the last (fine) adjustment is always UP and to the RIGHT when viewed from within the viewfinder. This matches how my scope slews to a target. If you overshoot, go back to the lower left quadrant and try again.
5. Repeat for a second star, which should be widely spaced from the first.
6. Repeat for third star.
7. Profit!
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