I wrote earlier this year that my biggest blocker to regularly engaging with my astrophotography hobby is:
[A] fundamental laziness I have when it comes to setting up and taking down my equipment. This is the biggest blocker I find to just getting out and doing.
This inspired me to rethink: what if I assembled a lighter-weight, more portable, less cumbersome astrophotography setup using my (beefy, carbon fiber) camera tripod, a polar mount (first the Vixen Polarie I’ve had for a while, then the iOptron SkyGuider Pro), maybe throw my autoguider on there, and hey presto! A setup that should be less effort to set up and take down on a little more of a whim, that I could set up and carry out whole. Or that was the theory.
What I’ve found in practice is that… it doesn’t solve the problem I set out to solve: my laziness. This is why I haven’t updated this series with any resulting photos yet, or attempts to travel, or just generally anything. The setup just doesn’t work for me. This isn’t to say it won’t work for someone else, but I’m more used to the conveniences of a computerized German Equatorial Mount workflow, where I can have software do a lot of the work for me.
I’ve thought about putting in a permanent pier, so that I don’t have to mess around as much with the tripod and mount alignment
This might be where I’m going next. Stay tuned.