PSA: My 'simple' plan to photograph the Orion Nebula turned into a 14-hour fight with a tracking mount that wouldn't calibrate.

I spent from sunset until sunrise in my backyard near Flagstaff just trying to get my new Sky-Watcher mount to actually follow the stars for more than a few minutes before it drifted, and I'm still not sure if it's the polar alignment, the software, or just bad luck.

4 comments

4 Comments

laura_schmidt822mo ago

Fourteen hours straight trying to calibrate a mount is a whole new level of pain. That's not just a bad night, that's an entire shift at a terrible job. Honestly sounds like you might have gotten a bad unit, because that much trouble from start to finish is wild.

miles_hall2mo ago

Honestly that drift sounds more like a software bug to me, not what william_garcia said.

william_garcia2mo ago

That drift sounds like a classic polar alignment headache.

reed.skyler1mo agoMost Upvoted

Yeah but if it was just polar alignment you'd usually dial it in after a few tries, not fourteen hours. I've had mounts where the drift was actually a bad worm gear or some backlash in the DEC axis, and it looked EXACTLY like a polar alignment problem. Check your guiding logs and see if the corrections are consistent or if they're suddenly jumping around - that's the tell. Also make sure your tripod is on solid ground and not settling overnight, that one got me good once.