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Why does every astrophotography tutorial skip over the polar alignment part?

I spent 3 months getting blurry stars on my deep sky shots, then realized my cheap polar scope was off by 5 degrees. Am I the only one who had to learn this the hard way?
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3 Comments
christopher_sullivan
christopher_sullivan19d agoMost Upvoted
Wait did you collimate your scope first before blaming the polar alignment?
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norathomas
norathomas18d ago
Wait, are you saying I should have been checking collimation before messing with polar alignment this whole time? I always figured that was just some advanced voodoo for big rigs, not something that'd wreck my star shapes right out of the gate.
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danielb43
danielb4318d ago
Are you saying you've been messing with polar alignment without even checking your collimation first? I get that it sounds like voodoo, but collimation is pretty basic - even my little 80mm frac needs a tweak now and then to keep stars round.
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