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Warning: I drove 3 hours to a dark sky site near Bend and my mount died at midnight
Last month I drove 3 hours out to a dark sky spot near Bend, Oregon to shoot the Andromeda galaxy, and my GoTo mount just stopped tracking around midnight. I sat there in the cold for 20 minutes checking cables before I realized the power tank had drained because I left the dew heater running at full blast. I ended up switching to my backup battery and manually guiding with a 30 second exposure stack instead, got about 40 usable frames before dawn. The final image is noisier than I wanted but the core came out sharp. What do you all carry as a backup power plan when you drive that far out?
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shaneb162d ago
Running a dew heater at full blast all night was the real mistake, not the power plan, since a single tank should last fine if you're not cooking your optics. Most of these "backup power" threads just end up as excuses to buy more gear when the fix is learning your actual draw.
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