Took me 45 minutes to figure out my telescope mount was upside down

I was setting up my gear last week for the Orion Nebula and spent way too long wondering why my polar alignment was off. After about 30 minutes of tweaking knobs and getting frustrated, I realized I had mounted the whole dovetail plate on the wrong side. Another 15 minutes to redo it all and finally get pointing correctly. Has anyone else had a simple setup mistake eat up half your observing time before?

3 comments

3 Comments

nina_hall483d agoMost Upvoted

and don't forget the focuser, I once spent twenty minutes checking collimation on a blurry star only to realize the focuser lock screw was still tight. that checklist idea is gold though, I'm stealing it for sure. saves so much headache when you're running on caffeine and ambition at 2am.

olivia6703d ago

...and the kicker is, I did the exact same thing with my dovetail plate last month. I actually keep a little checklist now (like, a literal piece of paper taped to my case) for when I'm setting up, just to run through the basics before I start tweaking. It covers mount orientation, counterweight position, and dovetail direction. Sounds silly but it saves me so much frustration, especially when I'm half asleep at 3am trying to catch Jupiter.

nina_taylor3d ago

Oh, man. I once spent a solid hour trying to figure out why my finderscope wouldn't focus, only to realize I'd left the lens cap on. The dumbest part was I kept thinking "man, it's really dark tonight." Taped that checklist to my case the next day too.