Deep Sky Alignment Field Guide

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01 · Before you leave

• Camera body, battery full + 2 sparesCold drains batteries fast, and a real session here runs for an hour or more once the tracker's running, don't rely on one
• A lens in the 85-300mm range, ideally f/4 or fasterThese targets are small and faint rather than spread across the sky, so reach matters more than width here, wider than this and most of them read as a small point lost in a big frame; longer than a tracker can comfortably hold steady for most beginners. Polaris and Orion's Belt work well toward the shorter end of that range, the Pleiades reward reaching further into it
• Sturdy tripod + a weight or hookEverything else in this list mounts on top of this, any wobble here undermines the tracker's own precision, hang a bag off the centre column if there's any wind at all

+ 13 more items in the full pack list

What's inside the full guide

• 02Setting up on siteFraming and alignment on site, tailored to your setup.
• 03SettingsExact ISO, aperture and shutter speed worked out for your camera and lens.
• 04Stacking & editingA full stacking-and-editing workflow, raw frames through to a finished image.

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