Finally got a decent shot of Andromeda after 4 tries

I was scrolling through a beginners astrophotography forum last night and someone said 'you don't need a $2,000 mount to get started, just work with what you have.' That really clicked for me. I've been trying to photograph M31 from my backyard in Flagstaff with just a DSLR and a tripod, and after 4 cloudy nights I finally got something recognizable last Wednesday. Has anyone else had that moment where one simple comment changed how you approach your setup?

3 comments

3 Comments

adam_patel2d ago

A more expensive mount literally changes everything though. Tracking is the whole game with deep sky stuff, and a cheap tripod with a DSLR is gonna drift out of frame in like 30 seconds at anything past 50mm. I get the sentiment of working with what you have, but you're fighting the Earth's rotation with zero gear to help you. Four tries and you got something recognizable, but with a $600 used star tracker you'd be stacking clean 2 minute subs instead of doing 10 second ones and hoping for the best. It's not gatekeeping to say that sometimes the gear actually matters a ton.

janarivera2d ago

You're fighting the Earth's rotation with zero gear to help you" is the most real sentence I've read today. So when you did your four tries with the DSLR on a cheap tripod, what did you actually get out of it that made you keep going? Like was it just stubbornness or did you see something in those blurry frames that felt worth chasing?

phoenix_grant342d agoMost Upvoted

Oh man, that's the thing right? It's not always about the end result, it's about that feeling of "what if I just tweak one more thing and it clicks!" Kinda like how I see people in my neighborhood keep trying to grow tomatoes in terrible soil year after year, they know it's a long shot but they just love that one tiny moment when something actually works. Sometimes the stubbornness is the whole point because even a blurry smudge of a galaxy feels like proof that you're connected to something way bigger than yourself.