So I finally pulled the trigger on that $400 star tracker

Saved up for a Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer for about six months. Took it out to a dark site near Flagstaff last weekend for the first time. My test shot was the Andromeda Galaxy, and I got way more detail in a single 90-second exposure than I ever did without it. The setup was a bit fiddly at first, but once polar aligned, it just worked. Honestly feels like it unlocked a whole new level for my astro photos. For anyone else starting to hit that untracked exposure limit, is a tracker the next logical step, or are there other tricks I should try first?

3 comments

3 Comments

paige16623d ago

Congrats on the tracker, that's huge. Honestly, the real game changer people skip is learning how to actually process those new, clean subs. A tracker gives you great data, but a bad stack or edit can still ruin it. I'd pour as much time into learning a good workflow as you did saving for the gear. The tracker is just step one.

laura48623d agoMost Upvoted

Totally, @paige166. Good data needs a good process.

elliot_mason6223d ago

My buddy Dave got a new tracker last spring. He spent weeks getting perfect subs of the Whirlpool Galaxy. Then he tried stacking them in some free software he didn't know, crushed the blacks, and it looked like a gray smudge. He basically turned all that work into a blurry mess. The gear was great, but he had no clue what to do after the capture. He's still learning the editing part.