the_fiona•24d agoTop Commenter

That Orion nebula photo with bad tracking ruined my whole workflow

I was out at Cherry Springs State Park last month trying to stack 3 hours of Orion data. Half my frames had star trails because my mount wasn't polar aligned right. Should I stick with unguided setups or just give in and buy an autoguider for deep sky?

2 comments

2 Comments

christopher_west124d ago

Oh man, just buy the autoguider. 3 hours unguided is pain you don't need.

noah_barnes24d ago

100 subs is a pretty small test for that. I get that autoguiding makes things easier, but 3 hours unguided is totally doable with a good polar alignment and a solid mount. @christopher_west1 I've pulled off 2 hour subs on my old Celestron AVX with just a careful drift alignment and it came out fine. The real pain is clouds rolling in or a cable snag, not a few minutes of manual guiding.