Spent 3 nights fighting star trails before I found the real culprit

I kept getting tiny star trails on 30 second exposures even with my tracker on. Turns out my tripod leg had a loose screw that I never checked, took me 3 clear nights to notice it. Has anyone else had a mount failure that was just a simple hardware fix?

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lewis.diana13d ago

The loose screw thing is SO real. I had a similar issue where my whole mount head felt solid but the base plate had a tiny gap, drove me INSANE for a week. Checked everything, the gears, the motor, the balance, all of it. Finally I just took the whole thing apart and found a stripped screw that was barely holding. One trip to the hardware store and it was fixed. Simple stuff like that is always the last thing you look for.