Troubleshooting Elongated Stars - Astrophotography Made Simple!

You've spent an hour setting up and... elongated stars! Astrophotography can be frustrating (that's an understatement!) so in this video I'll run through 3 key things to check when you're getting elongated stars.

[@ronrotunno2901]

Great tips Dave, I find that checking (and adjusting) my polar alignment about every half hour is really beneficial. This from the star tracker and modest focal length lens camp so not very challenging to begin with.

[@keystothecosmos7527]

Haha. Great idea Ron 👍

[@ronrotunno2901]

@@keystothecosmos7527 IPolar makes doing so a breeze. A great feature to check and adjust alignment as the payload/weight shifts during tracking.

[@user-lt9py2pu6u]

Very sound idea to check the polar alignment and star shapes regularly. Depending on where you set up, mounts can shift position slightly over an imaging session. I live near a busy road and never thought that any vibration from it would be enough to shift the mount until I started auto guiding, the resulting graphs said it all. Also, tripods can sink into what appears to be relatively hard ground, again not by much but enough to throw off polar alignment. Where I live there's always a chance of the neighborhood cats or wildlife brushing up against the mount as well.

[@mlethbridge76]

Have you considered guiding 😂? Great tips though Dave, although I can never tell using the spirit level on the mount if it's actually level.

[@dicarlon1]

Lol shout out to Mike 🤣

[@keystothecosmos7527]

😂 What is this guiding that's all the rage?... 🤔

[@anata5127]

You got 05 polar alignment in ASIair?! Check it in NINA or Sharpcap and see whether it is real 05. You could be surprised. With seeing in Toronto, it is almost impossible to get real 05” polar alignment. Then, I saw ASIair often shows amazing guiding accuracy with dodgy mounts. Checking in PHD2 showed that these numbers are well exaggerated; not 0.5” but 0.8-0.9”, etc. By the way, real-deal encoders don’t react on slightly incorrect balance, wind or some tension of wires.

[@oq17]

Why does level matter so long as you Ra axis is aligned ?