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Rant: My star tracker mount froze up at 2am on a solo shoot
Went out last Thursday night to Cherry Springs, finally got a clear sky after weeks of clouds. I had my mount all set up, polar aligned, camera balanced, the whole deal. About 45 minutes into a 90 minute imaging run on the Orion Nebula, the declination motor just stopped responding. No error code, no warning, just dead. The tracking kept going in RA so the stars stayed round, but the framing was stuck and I lost half the night troubleshooting. I tried swapping cables, resetting the hand controller, even reflashing the firmware from my laptop in the dark. Nothing worked, so I packed up at 3am feeling like I wasted the drive and the $40 in gas. Turns out the motor connector had a loose pin, I found it when I got home and took the cover off. Has anyone else had a mount fail mid-session like that, or am I just lucky?
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