Settle an argument: tracked mount vs. star tracker for deep sky photos?

I was saving up for a proper equatorial mount, but a buddy kept insisting a star tracker is all you need for widefield shots. He said I was wasting money on a big mount when I could grab a SkyWatcher Star Adventurer for under $400. I figured why not try his way first. So I borrowed his tracker and spent three nights at a dark site near Flagstaff shooting the Orion Nebula. The results were decent for 30 second subs, but I kept fighting drift and poor alignment. I ended up going with a used Celestron AVX mount for $600 and man, the difference in tracking accuracy is night and day. Has anyone else tried both and regretted one choice?

3 comments

3 Comments

felix_hayes641mo ago

Man that's pretty much exactly what happened to me. I started with a star tracker and got so frustrated with the drift and having to restack every time I bumped it. The AVX was a game changer for my workflow.

ward.jamie1mo ago

My buddy Mike busted his Orion Sirius for like the third time last summer. He was trying to get a clean shot of M31 and the drift was so bad his subs looked like streaky garbage. He literally threw his controller across the driveway after he bumped the tripod and lost an hour of data. Swapped to a Celestron AVX a month later and now he just sets it up and walks away. Said he hasn't had to redo a single night since.

the_anthony1mo ago

@ward.jamie that "threw his controller across the driveway" line hit home hard. My buddy Dan tweaked his polar alignment so many times one night that he just sat down in his lawn chair and stared at the sky for like 20 minutes before giving up.