Welp. It's started. Got my star tracker last weekend and a tripod for it this week.
I needed a new tripod because the star tracker is ~4 pounds, my camera + lens is ~4 pounds and my existing tripod is only rated to 5 pounds. I did put everything together on my existing tripod and it held fine, but when (not an if) I put the 10 pound counter weight on, things may be different. I'd rather spend the money and get a tripod rated for 22 pounds. This way, if the tripod fails it and my gear are (hopefully) covered under warranty. I should check up on that...
The tripod is great, it extends to 6'7" but I'll never need to make it that tall because currently the spotting scope on the star tracker is just about at my eye level, and
I'm 6'2". The center column on the tripod can extend up another 6 or 8 inches but doing that creates instability and is more susceptible to shake and vibration. And when shooting at long focal lengths, you want everything to be as stable as possible.
The photos were less than stellar but I'll get there!
This photo was at 22 seconds. I
think it was when the tracker was working because there's a pretty solid point where the stars are and some comatic aberration, where the photos
appear to have "wings". But the giant bright star (actually Mars, I think?) in the middle of the image makes me think the tripod had a bit of vibration at some point.
This here is a 5 minute photo when the star tracker wasn't working. I ruled out the "not moving fast enough" thing because if it was moving, the stars would not look like this. It was a cloudy night and the North Star, Polaris, was covered by clouds. So, I highly doubt I blindly centered Polaris in the alignment scope this perfectly.
In the meantime I'll be learning about taking "dark" and "bias" frames and how to utilize them in processing astrophotography. I'm only using a 300mm for practice, and because mistakes (such as the Polar Alignment) are easier to spot at these longer focal distance. Once I get confident I'll move back to 14mm and 50mm.
The
2018 Astrophotography Winners were posted a few days ago, so I've got plenty to look up to as next Summer approaches.
As always, I'll be sure to share my results and what I've learned as I go through this next step in my night sky photography over in
the Astrophotography topic since I'll be focusing on Deep Space Objects (DSOs) such as Andromeda and other celestial bodies. Then when I focus on nightscapes again, I'll post here