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Took me 6 nights in my own backyard in Tucson to figure out why every star photo had little hot dog shaped stars
So about five weeks ago I set up my first real try at deep sky photos with an old 8 inch reflector I got from a guy in Phoenix for $120. First night out, every star in the frame looked like a tiny hot dog, all stretched and smeared the same way. I figured it was the mount, so I spent two nights tearing the mount apart in the dark with a flashlight in my teeth and it was fine. Then I blamed my focus, so I printed a Bahtinov mask off a free site and spent another night going back and forth, still hot dogs. Turned out the real problem was a loose thumbscrew on the camera adapter, maybe a quarter turn of slack, and the whole camera was sagging just enough to smear every star. Total fix time: about 15 seconds with a small screwdriver. Total time lost: six nights of driving out past the city lights to a spot off Valencia Road and hauling everything back at 2am. The worst part is I still have no photos to show for it, just a camera full of hot dog stars. Has anyone else chased a problem all over their gear only to find it was one little screw the whole time?
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matthewsullivan19d ago
Chased a guiding issue for like three weekends where my stars kept trailing in one direction no matter what I did with the mount. Turned out my guide scope was just barely loose in its rings, not enough to see or feel by hand but enough to shift under the weight of the cable. Wrapped a strip of electrical tape around the tube where the rings clamp and it never moved again. Now I do a wiggle test on every single connection before it gets dark out, saves a whole lot of 2am misery.
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