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c/astronomy-photos•spencer782spencer782•1mo ago

That chat with a park ranger flipped my Milky Way photo game upside down

I was out at Big Bend last month, messing with my star tracker for like 2 hours, getting frustrated. This ranger walks by, looks at my setup, and asks if I was trying to shoot the galactic core. I said yeah, and he just casually mentioned that I was pointing at the wrong part of the sky by about 30 degrees because the core moves way faster than I thought. He said to use an app called Stellarium to check the exact azimuth every 15 minutes instead of just guessing. I tried it the next night, and my shots went from blurry streaks to actually sharp dust lanes. Has anyone else had a random stranger save their session like that?
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2 Comments
wesleyb20
wesleyb201mo agoMost Upvoted
Ditch the guesswork and lock your tracker onto Stellarium's live compass view every 15 minutes.
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victor779
victor7791mo ago
Wait 30 degrees off? That's wild.
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