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Shoutout to the guy who pointed out my star tracker was drifting because I had it on a loose tripod for 6 months
I spent a whole night at a dark site in eastern Oregon wondering why my Orion Nebula shots looked like comets before a random astrophotographer walked over and tapped my tripod leg and said 'your rig is wobbling like a wet noodle dude'.
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the_terry3d ago
Went out to Joshua Tree last spring with a buddy who kept blaming his autoguider for bad trailing. Turns out he'd been setting up on this cheap photo tripod that didn't have a hook for a weight bag. Wind came up around 2am and his whole mount was vibrating like a tuning fork. We hung my car keys and a full Nalgene bottle off the center column and it still shook. Learned then that the tripod makes or breaks the whole setup.
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