Took 3 weeks to figure out my star trails were a tripod problem, not a polar alignment problem

Cora Martinez · 2026-10-25T04:20:02.887145+00:00

Everyone told me to nail polar alignment first, so I rebuilt my whole routine and still got trails at 30 seconds. Turned out the center column on my old tripod was slipping a tiny bit every shot, and a $15 set of leg locks fixed it in ten minutes. Anyone else chase the wrong cause for way too long like that?

Librear

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Took 3 weeks to figure out my star trails were a tripod problem, not a polar alignment problem | Astronomy Photos - Librear