So they tell me astrophotography is something people do for fun...

Eric Gagne · Feb 26, 2026, 07:15 PM

Fun…. You mean like:

Buying a Stellavita and a new camera that is supposed to be supported only to find out that the camera works but the integrated filter wheel does not yet so you have to put everything on the shelves for 3-4 months.

Then once it’s fixed and you start using it you realize that the wobbling power connector is not a normal thing (ok, I’ll admit I was a bit slow on this) so you contact the manufacturer who tells you there’s supposed to be a lock nut there.

After you make them understand that it was always missing, you didn’t lose it, they ship you some lock nuts that fits the connector.

All happy to be able to fix your camera you put that nut on only for the connector to break completely because it got weak while it was loose so now you have a brand new unused and unusable camera and a Stellavita with nothing to use it with.

Then you go through the nightmare of shipping your camera from Canada to China to have it repaired but you don’t want to waste your shooting season so you just buy another one figuring that when the broken one comes back you can put together a 2nd rig.

All happy again when you get that brand new camera which is exactly the same as the one you sent for repair you try it with your Stellavita and you’re all happy again because the camera AND the integrated filter wheel are both recognized and working.

So you shoot some stars and DSO for an hour, download your subs to PI, check the data and find out they all have 999 degrees for sensor temp in the fits header and you have no idea if it actually cooled your sensor to the temperature you wanted.

So you shutdown and reboot everything thinking maybe you’ll have better luck the 2nd time around only for the Stellavita to keep telling you “Failed to capture image” every time you try.

If that’s the kind of fun you are referring to…….I’m playing too 😁

The lack of quality control throughout this industry is simply astounding. When I first got started I read about 1990s SCTs from Meade and Celestron in which the baffle tube wasn’t parallel to the tube axis in which they pushed the corrector all the way to one side trying to center the secondary mirror, and thought “thank god that’s improved’.

Then I bought a used LX200 and burned out the board the first time I used it because my power supply provided 13 volts instead of 12.5. They’d used some bargain basement capacitors that burned out if the recommended voltage was exceeded by a few tenths of a volt.

The ONTC carbon fiber Newt I bought came with a focuser attachment plate that was beveled. It was as if they designed it to wobble. It had to be machined flat to get a stable focuser configuration. The paint has all gradually peeled off the metal parts of the OTA because they apparently didn’t sand it before painting. Notably, Teleskop Service prominently advertises their scopes as “a German alternative to cheap Chinese gear”, but when the scope arrived, the box was prominently labeled “Made in Taiwan”.

The ASIAIR works if you hop up and down on your left foot while attaching the equipment. It took me most of a night to realize that the reason it wouldn’t recognize my mount was that it wanted the mount powered up AFTER the ASIAIR booted.

My $4K CEM40EC mount came with the OTA mount and the counterweight bar 170 degrees apart instead of 180. A $4K mount and the first thing I did was to spend $80 shipping it back to correct a manufacturing defect that was obvious on casual inspection.

I’ve had pretty good luck with SharpStar/ASKAR so far.

My friends ask me why I spend most of my spare time working on my gear. I tell them that this hobby requires spending $5K for entry level gear, and $20K if you want gear that actually works.

I love a challenge! Partly because I was a professional electrical troubleshooter to my employers for 42 years.

And I like making things work beyond their out-of-the-box engineering specifications. So the challenge to make all this Shinola work has an appeal to me.

It isn’t a toaster. And if you thought it would be easy, well, you set yourself up for being sorely disappointed.

There is a myriad of things that can go wrong, as you are beginning to realize. Let it be a lesson to you that even when things do run well some doggone clouds will drift by and fubar the whole night.

You have to learn patience, as well as precision in setting up. You can’t get everything setup and squared away, then stumble on a tripod leg and ignore it. Nope, you have to go back to your Polar Alignment and come forward all over again.

I discovered one night back in the beginning that even the concrete isn’t stable. I was watching images coming in an found if I even moved slightly it showed in the end result. My best thing was to put my mount on adjustable wooden planks on sanded in bricks. that helped with any ground vibrations to get those coveted tiny round stars and fine details. To further stabilize my mount I’ve gone to remote operation. No tromping around when imaging.

Then… there is the finiky electronics, USB connectors, and gremlins that play on the compooterz.

Yeah, nope this ain’t a toaster. And please don’t blame the equipment for your lack of understanding and ability. You sound like a manager.

Is this you? LOL!

📷 Monkey Head Nebula 180s 100 quad LP filter

https://app.astrobin.com/i/h4cb6j/

Brian Puhl · Feb 26, 2026, 08:09 PM

I’d say mostly you just had some bad luck, a real string of it…. but you will come to learn the good brands and the not so good brands. Generally speaking, those brand names you mentioned are the ones I stay away from. Skywatcher being the exception. I’m a pretty big fan of their equipment, and while it may be imported, they still seem to maintain very good QC. Almost all my scopes and mounts are skywatcher.

294’s are known for alot of issues, if you actually get your camera fixed, I’d sell it and upgrade personally.

iOptron really lost any and all of my interest last year at NEAF. I put my hands on every single mount they had on display, and every single one of them had really bad backlash. On the other hand, I was operating a remote CEM120 the other day and it quite surprised me. Small evidence of backlash but not enough to be concerned. Maybe it’s just the lower end gear?

What black smudge are you seeing on this sensor you mentioned? Might be able to help.

Well, what can I say? We all have our personal experience.

• I’m not going to defend the Explore Scientific decision. From what I’d read, I figured I’d just have to replace the focuser. But I should have known better.

• My EQR6 is my least favorite piece of equipment, and I hate Skywatcher’s support services even more. The damn mount has been a lemon from Day 1, and it costs me $140 round trip to ship it back for service. At least until I got frustrated and had it hypertuned. Now Skywatcher refuses to work on it at all, even on a fee basis. Seems like the kind of outfit I usually avoid dealing with.

• Ioptron’s manufacturing is crap, but their service department is world class. I have a problem, I send the mount to them (for a lot less postage than the Skywatcher), they tune it up and send it back for a little more than the cost of postage. It’s a reasonable compromise for a guy who isn’t mechanically inclined. I’ve read that some people actually buy new Ioptron mounts and send them to the service department for a tuneup before using them. :>)

• The 294 is 6 years old and this is the first problem I’ve had with it.

• The ASIAir is a bit of an idiot box, but I tired of spending 4 hours loading software on my laptop only to get “Permission denied! Exception error f673$kjh8678j34!” or to spend 2 days trying to get PhD2 to recognize my camera. Hardware isn’t the only place where AP has a QC problem.

Everyone has their personal experience and anecdotes, and we all know that if everyone’s wife was nice that Takahashi and 10 Micron would be the only outfits in business. The rest of us struggle in a hobby in which $6K is the entry fee, but it costs $25K if you want gear that actually works most of the time.

“So they tell me astrophotography is something people do for fun...”

They lied.

It’s probably masochism, but you do it by yourself, to yourself, out in dark places, often in the cold…. 😬

Define fun….

I could tell you my experience’s and you’d be running to the trash can to get rid of all these evil contraptions. Like how it took years for me to get anything above a picturd, or how my first mount was dead right out of the box, or how it took a year and a half to get a camera that worked and that was only because a friend took pity on me and loaned me one he had. Then he sold it to me for ¼ what it was worth. But it proved I was on the right track and had my ducks in a row, just needed something that wasn’t expensive junk. But then, look at all the fun you would have missed. Not to mention the downtime shipping things back and forth for warranty repairs.

Tons of fun! Then comes a night where you actually do manage to get something out of the blurry images that you can see, and in that moment you forget all the flogging you’ve been through. And the thousands and thousands of dollars you spent because you were almost there.

Arnie · Feb 27, 2026, 03:02 AM

After watching me stomp in and out of the back door for about the 10th time one night last summer my wife naively asked “Isn’t this hobby supposed to be fun?”
My response? “I’m having fun, d****t!”

Arnie, 🤣

When I went through trying to use a minicomputer on my mount I about wore a pathway through the floor tile.

I finally decided running blind wasn’t for me and went back to my laptop for a mount computer.

I still have to go back and forth a lot. But at least I can see at both ends. 😉

_

I had to run out and uncover the guide scope after building a new dark library. And Halleluiah! Finally, off to a shaky start….

Are we having fun yet?

And don’ t forget that when the equipment finally runs smooth the clouds come in and stay for a long time. Ultimately, though, when you look at the nebulae and galaxies you've finally managed to image, all the trouble seems forgotten.

Passion comes from a Latin word, which originally means ‘suffering and enduring’.

SonnyE · Feb 27, 2026, 02:46 AM

It’s probably masochism, but you do it by yourself, to yourself, out in dark places, often in the cold…. 😬

Define fun….

I could tell you my experience’s and you’d be running to the trash can to get rid of all these evil contraptions. Like how it took years for me to get anything above a picturd, or how my first mount was dead right out of the box, or how it took a year and a half to get a camera that worked and that was only because a friend took pity on me and loaned me one he had.

Sonny, you're not “blaming the equipment for your lack of understanding and ability”, are you? 🙃

SonnyE · Feb 27, 2026, 04:35 PM

John Tucker · Feb 27, 2026, 11:15 AM

SonnyE · Feb 27, 2026, 02:46 AM

It’s probably masochism, but you do it by yourself, to yourself, out in dark places, often in the cold…. 😬

Define fun….

I could tell you my experience’s and you’d be running to the trash can to get rid of all these evil contraptions. Like how it took years for me to get anything above a picturd, or how my first mount was dead right out of the box, or how it took a year and a half to get a camera that worked and that was only because a friend took pity on me and loaned me one he had.

Sonny, you're not “blaming the equipment for your lack of understanding and ability”, are you? 🙃

No Sir. Stating facts. Equipment I have fixed and perfected my whole life. No matter how “Chinese” (or German, or Japanese) it was. Some things cannot be avoided; companies gave in and sold out their names and reputations to Taiwan. Two I trusted from my youth, Celestron and Orion, turned out to be bad investments. Especially my first mount.

There is a little-known fact, the Chinese Government tells their manufacturers where they can buy their components. Communism perfected. The specs for components that were engineered into a product by its designers isn’t worth beans when you are forced to use Uncle Ho’s diodes in place of what the engineering specified. So there is the weak link in the AVX. But here’s a stat for you: I and 5 friends bought Celestron AVX when starting out. 6 AVX’s scattered across the USA. Out of that sampling 3 were problematic, 3 were not. In my book a 50% failure rate is not a good margin.

Then there is the Chinese business model, 2 year warranty. Enticing, until you need it. My AVX was back at Celestron in Hawthorn twice, Initially, and at 8 months. Uncle Ho’s Diodes. Remember, I’m an Electrical Troubleshooter by trade. They would rather fiddle with changing out a bad PC board and send it back, rolling the dice it would hold up till the warranty expired, than to fix the production problem at the factory and put out a quality product.

So when my AVX died for the third time in 3.5 years I was done with it. It got sold for parts and the tripod got given to a friend who wanted it for one of his telescopes. And I was looking for a replacement mount. I kept running across ads saying things: like a Losmandy this… or Losmandy that… I got curious and researched Losmandy. I liked what I found. Superior quality at prices a working man could afford (or this well retired one).

My CFO said for me to wait until February to replace my mount. 4 months! Right through the prime of Nebula season. That AVX screwed me at the worst time. I researched, I asked every question I couldn’t answer for myself, and I built my GM811G HD online. I had it almost down to the last hand knob when I called Tanya at Losmandy. Yes, I could come down and pick up my mount at the Factory. It was really nice to meet Scott, Tanya, and Brian was there (before they hired him). After the sale and in use I added some other hand knobs and a RA Extension kit. Something nobody else even offered. A way to divide the RA and DEC axis’ from each other for transporting. Important when working with ~150 pounds of equipment alone to be able to make modules for transporting it to and from the house/site or putting the baby into an RV to go roaming. Scott told me, “Don’t mess with it, just use it.” Sage advice, because almost ever bad-mouthing complaint was from deebs who had dismantled their mount during the obligatory cloud season that follows every new mount or telescope purchased. Because Losmandy Mounts tend to invite you to want to dismantle it.

So I don’t blame a piece of equipment. I dig in and find the reason a pile is the pile it is. Some things can’t be avoided; China is the only viable source. Even the once highly reliable sources have cheapened out anymore. But I am much more careful now than I was back when. When I discovered Losmandy’s Gemini PC boards were made in Singapore I was on that with a microscope. Singapore does not like to be bundled into the Chinese business model. They are not. Losmandy has the Gemini II boards built in Singapore, but to very strict specifications. Components have to exceed specifications and pass rigorous testing. Quality control that comes from Burbank, USA. So I was willing to accept that Scott was backing his customers. And he does.

I got a USA mount and haven’t had a lick of problem or unhappiness since. There are more details I can share about other parts of my equipment and why I chose what I have. But this is getting quite drawn out. Suffices to say I do not like getting screwed around. So I’m very careful and look in the corners and closets when I’m putting my cash on the barrelhead to but something.

There is a reason China calls their boats Junk’s…. And you are finding out.

Deleted. Lost my temper here.

AstroRBA · Feb 27, 2026 at 07:01 PM

MaksPower · Feb 27, 2026, 06:13 AM

A lot of “hobbies” are somewhat masochistic - be glad this one isn’t particularly dangerous !

Not sure about that ! I bent down once to attend to some cable issue on the ground and stood right up full force into my CEM120 counterweights; Bang ! I had to have a few shots of whisky to shake that one off!.. (hmm… or maybe I had the whisky before that happened!? Can’t recall! …)

John Tucker · Feb 27, 2026 at 07:14 PM

AstroRBA · Feb 27, 2026 at 07:01 PM

MaksPower · Feb 27, 2026, 06:13 AM

A lot of “hobbies” are somewhat masochistic - be glad this one isn’t particularly dangerous !

Not sure about that ! I bent down once to attend to some cable issue on the ground and stood right up full force into my CEM120 counterweights; Bang ! I had to have a few shots of whisky to shake that one off!.. (hmm… or maybe I had the whisky before that happened!? Can’t recall! …)

Was the mount OK? 😆