Spent $400 on a premium star tracker and it either made my photos or wasted my cash

I dropped $400 on a Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer for deep-sky shots from my backyard in Portland. First clear night I got a stunning Orion nebula stack with no trailing at all. But last weekend the polar alignment mechanism jammed up and I lost half the night trying to fix it. Has anyone else put money into a portable tracker and regretted it or loved it enough to ignore the flaws?

2 comments

2 Comments

oscar7431mo ago

Honestly take it back or see if they'll send you a replacement for that polar alignment piece. I've had mine lock up too and it's annoying but the results are worth keeping a spare part around.

milessmith1mo agoMost Upvoted

Your polar alignment piece actually locked up on you too? That's wild, I figured mine was just a one-off dud from the factory. I got maybe three uses out of it before it started binding up real bad.