PSA: My $80 star tracker vs a solid tripod and intervalometer

The tracker gave me star trails at 30 seconds, but stacking 200 untracked shots from my old tripod in DeepSkyStacker gave me a cleaner Orion Nebula. Anyone have a budget tracker that actually works under $150?

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jade8855mo ago

Read a forum thread last week where someone had the same problem with a cheap tracker (they called it a "clock drive"). The general advice was that under $200, you're basically paying for a motorized mount that can't handle real weight or polar alignment. Your stacking result makes total sense. A shaky tracker adds its own movement, so stacking just makes the blur worse. Honestly, for that budget, putting the money towards a better tripod head and just doing more untracked stacks seems like the move.

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colemartinez5mo ago

But @jade885, that cheap tracker got me my first clean 30-second shot, which felt like pure magic.

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dylanbarnes3mo ago

Nah, DeepSkyStacker actually handles tracked data fine if the tracking is consistent.

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