Comment by dylan604
It looks like you have a typical OTA attached, what camera are you using with that? I've only ever used my DLSR attached to the OTA for prime photography, but it is heavy. I've learned to test the position by hand of the camera through the full rotation to see how the orientation of the camera will change throughout the night to prevent hanging situations and so it has forward tension. I noticed more backlash type issues when it had reverse tension. The one thing I haven't done yet, is to just attached the camera to a small ball head to do tracked wide angle images. However, I really haven't done any dark sky shooting in many years, pre-Starlink. I wonder if long tracked exposures with wide angles would ever not be affected by Starlink trails
I switch between the cheap Byomic 76/700 newton and my Sigma 600mm lens (Canon EF but using an adapter to fit the Olympus body). I tried to get the DSLR looking into the newtonian but it was just too heavy, causing the plastic focuser to simply bend way off axis. I've since bought a dedicated astro camera (Neptune C II) which fits alright on the newtonian. I'm keeping the Byomic 76 only for visual observations now. Looking to buy a proper refractor of around 480mm. The Sigma 600 does alright with the DSLR but isn't very sharp, hard to focus and suffering from some coma. It's good enough to learn the ropes for now.