Astro is hard
Well, I know it would be a learning curve, but I didn’t quite expect it to be like this…
I took the mount out the other night to have another try at imaging a few things. Hmmm. Yes. Well.
Setup was easy, aligning wasn’t, and the mount did not track at all because it wasn’t aligned accurately. So the stars walked about 1/3 of the way across the camera sensor. Thankfully the stacking software did a great job of lining everything up, but still - a better alignment means better tracking and better images.
The next attempt was even less successful. Despite setting everything up whilst it was still light (there’s nothing quite like fumbling around in the gloom, trying to work out where the various bolts are, where the cables go, and the million and one other things that go on) I still wasn’t able to get the mount polar aligned. And from there, it just got worse until I was wanting to kick the mount over and set it on fire.
Thankfully, sanity prevailed and I didn’t destroy all my gear in an epic rage-quit.
So, rather than doing battle with lining everything up manually, I’ve slowly been acquiring more ‘scope parts, and this week has been the last of my big expenditures - a guide scope and camera to help keep the ‘scope on target when it’s tracking and a laptop to drive it all.
The guide scope & camera are coming from China, so I have no idea when they will actually arrive. I would have preferred to have used the company’s eBay store, but they didn’t have the camera / scope combination I wanted - and their prices were about 30% higher than being direct. (Even after shipping and a 5% foreign exchange tax, I came out about $100 ahead.)