Serious question, is a $500 star tracker worth it for a beginner?

I bought a Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer last year thinking it would let me take amazing deep space shots. After a month of trying, I realized my light pollution is so bad I can barely see the Milky Way. I spent hours setting it up only to get fuzzy, gray photos. On one hand, the gear is solid and works as advertised. On the other, I could have put that money toward a trip to a dark sky park and used a basic tripod. Has anyone else bought fancy gear before their location could support it?

3 comments

3 Comments

finley8201mo ago

Classic case of buying the ticket before checking if the train is even running. That tracker is probably crying in your closet, dreaming of a dark sky it will never see. It's like buying a race car when you live on a dirt road full of potholes. The gear is good, but it's useless without the right conditions. Maybe you can use it as a really expensive paperweight until you move.

paule531mo ago

Wait, does a star tracker really need a dark sky to work? I mean, I thought they were mostly for long exposure shots to avoid star trails, even from a city. The light pollution would still mess with the final image quality, but the tracker itself should still function, right? Maybe it's more about having clear skies than perfectly dark ones.

taylor.paige27d ago

Oh man, the "expensive paperweight" bit hit close to home. I had a buddy who did almost the exact same thing. He bought one of those Sky-Watcher trackers after watching too many YouTube videos, thinking he could just set it up in his backyard in downtown Austin and get those Milky Way shots. First night out, he spent two hours trying to polar align through a gap in the trees with a streetlight shining right on him. He got it tracking but every single shot was just a hazy orange mess because of all the light pollution. He spent the next month driving an hour out of town just to get a few usable frames before sunrise. Ended up selling it for half what he paid after six months of that hassle. Your mileage may vary with a really strong light pollution filter, but yeah, the tracker itself works fine in town, the photos just won't look like much.