 This is an image of the Ghost Nebula that I captured last fall and finally finished processing a couple weeks ago. I printed it out here at 300 dpi, and at arm's length I see absolutely nothing wrong with it. The details, the color, the composition, they all look just as I had in my mind's eye, exactly as I planned. And this is a bucket list image for me. A close-up image of the Ghost Nebula is one of a handful of images that I've been thinking about for years. So I should feel this great sense of accomplishment, but instead all I feel is disappointment. And I know the reason. The reason is I've inadvertently become a full-on pixel peeper. And for anyone that's not familiar with this disease, it can infect any photographer, but I think astrophotographers are especially susceptible to it. When you become a full-on pixel peeper like I have, you can't enjoy the image as a whole anymore. Because you know that if you zoom in far enough, there's a technical fault holding this image back from its true potential. And that technical fault could be any number of things. But in this case, the technical fault is a common one with astrophotography. These stars are not round. They are misshapen. If I draw a perfectly round circle around the star in Photoshop, you can see the star is more like a rounded triangle than it is a circle. And you might be thinking, that's nuts. Who cares? They look round enough when you look at the whole image as it's meant to be seen. Not zoomed into 400% like I'm showing here. And I mean, I agree with you, but you have to understand it doesn't matter. For me, pixel peeping becomes this obsessive thought pattern that I can't escape once I know there is a technical issue with my image. And it genuinely feels like the only path forward is to burden this image, move on completely knowing I'm not going to be happy until I can fix that technical issue. And then that loops right into another disease that astrophotographers can catch very easily, which is gas. Gear acquisition syndrome. And let me explain how this syndrome works. Let's say I didn't know why my stars weren't round. I actually do think I know, but let's pretend I didn't know why. And so I go online and I go on the forums. I go on astro bin. I go on Instagram. I go anywhere where there's more experienced astrophotographers that maybe can help me. Maybe even ones that use the same telescope as me. What's the problem? Why are my stars so bad? And I get several answers, maybe a few different answers, but there seems to be a consensus forming. They all say, Oh, that mount you use, the Skywatcher EQ6R. That's a bit small. You're a bit under mounted for the Ascar 130phq. And so all you need is a bigger, more expensive mount. And then my star shape problem is going to be solved and that may be true. But even if I fix this issue with the star shape, will I be finally happy with my next image? Unfortunately, I can already tell you no, I won't because you see when you become a pixel paper and you have gas, gear acquisition syndrome, there is always a new problem and that new problem can always be solved with a new piece of gear. And there is no end to that. It's this unending cycle. And for me, and I think many others in the hobby, this is what astrophotography can feel like sometimes. And there are obviously some big issues with that. If you're constantly feeling disappointed with your images, it can be hard to maintain enthusiasm for the hobby. And then if you're constantly buying new gear, you can quickly justify draining your life savings on the new mount, the new telescope, the new camera, whatever is coming out you know, this week. And what I've painted so far, it may sound like a pretty dire situation and you might be thinking, why does anyone pursue astrophotography at all? Well, I've been thinking about this in respect to myself and I realize there have been periods where I've been much happier with what I was producing and it's not because the images were necessarily any better than they are now. It really just came down to two things. One, I wasn't comparing myself to others. Instead, I was only comparing the quality of my current images to my own past images. And I think that can be a very healthy thing to do. I think you'll find when you do that that you always can appreciate the progress you've made in the hobby. And then the second thing that made me happier is I was committed to just one rig. Whenever I've committed myself to not changing anything out from night to night, keeping with the same camera, the same mount, the same optics, the same filters for month after month after month, I've been able to focus on making the best of that setup. And I think that's when I've actually grown the most as an astrophotographer. When I've slowed down and said, I'm not going to spend any money, I'm going to try to make the best possible image with what I have in this moment. And for me, I will admit I haven't had a stable rig like that in years, partly because of this YouTube channel taking off. I'm always wanting to review the newest telescopes and lenses and filters and cameras and mounts and everything else that comes out. Okay, I've gone off track now, because what I wanted to say, I do actually think I know why my stars are triangular, and it comes down to my own laziness. I know quite well that when I put an Ascar 130 PHQ and the three counterweights and all this other stuff on soft ground, the weight of it all can make the tripod sink into the ground unevenly. This throws off polar alignment, then the autoguider has to work harder, and you get ever so slightly misshapen stars in each subexposure. But when you combine all of the data together over multiple nights and different filters imaging on both sides of the meridian, your stars end up looking triangular, because they're misshapen in different directions. And I could have avoided all of that by just remembering to put down some bricks or concrete blocks to stop the tripod from sinking into the ground. It's a very inexpensive solution that I didn't do, but here's the thing. There are hundreds of things like this in astrophotography, things that we do or forget to do that cause small technical issues that hold our images back from their highest potential. So pixel peeping isn't all bad, and I know I've been harping on it for the whole video up until now, but the truth is you can often figure out inexpensive solutions that don't lead to gas gear acquisition syndrome. And by adding these little fixes together, like putting blocks underneath your tripod legs, you can actually let pixel peeping lead you into greatly improving your skill as an astrophotographer over time. Because each little fix that you figure out compounds until you're getting really good data out of your setup, as long as you're not changing too many things. And you don't improve in that same way by just buying new gear. For example, if I had just gone out and bought a new heavier mount, set it up on the same soft ground, I would have run into the exact same problem or even worse. And maybe next I'd think, oh, well, well, I guess the problem isn't the mount, it must be the telescope. I need a new telescope now. But because I tried setting everything up on concrete bricks and found that this rig was perfectly capable of getting round stars, like in this image of M81 and M82, I have now used pixel peeping to my advantage. I've internalized an easy fix and know that this rig is perfectly capable of rendering round stars across the field at a 1000 millimeter focal length if I put in all these little fixes into place. But knowing all that, am I cured from pixel peeping and gear acquisition syndrome just because I know what the real problem is and I found a solution to this particular problem? No. Unfortunately, there's always going to be new products that seem interesting. And it's very hard for me not to feel like some new piece of gear is going to be this X factor that brings my images to this next level, even though on a rational level, I know I have everything I need already to take world-class images. I don't need any more gear. And I guess I'll share this. It's all gotten more confusing for me with doing astrophotography YouTube as a career because sometimes gear that I want for the channel, like a full-frame monochrome camera with small pixels, that would be really useful for really showing the differences between different telescopes at the extremes of their image circles and really sort of drawing comparisons. But that's not something I personally want at all. I have no interest in that really because I know that a full-frame camera with small pixels is a nightmare for pixel-peepers like me because there's just so many factors that go into making that work. The main one being tilt can be a nightmare with a camera like that. It's just a whole can of worms, and I usually avoid it. But I'm still toying with getting one because I think it could be useful for making my videos better, the reviews especially. So I've lately felt this struggle between where the YouTube channel is leading me versus where my personal passion in astrophotography would lead me. And something I've been thinking about regarding that is I really want to get back to having a dedicated personal rig where I can just not change anything out, take months or even years to fine-tune it, and just work on my passion projects with it, my bucket list images. So I'm very excited that I'm actually going to be constructing a backyard observatory on my property here in New Hampshire this summer, and I'm going to put in two piers, and one pier is going to be just for me. I'm going to put whatever mount telescope and camera that I'm feeling most in tune with, and I'm going to just stick to that, and probably not even talk much about that rig on the YouTube channel because it's my personal thing. And I'm just going to go after my bucket list of images that I've always wanted to get and really just concentrate on personal growth in the hobby with that rig, with that pier. And then with the other pier, I can test whatever needs testing, continue offering my shootout reviews and other mainstays of the channel. And so even though this video maybe was a little negative, I don't know, but don't worry about me. I have a plan for how I'm going to handle all this and hopefully break out of this cycle that I felt like I'd been in. And if you're struggling with either pixel peeping or gear acquisition syndrome or both, and you want to, you know, share publicly, let us know in the comments. And I hope this maybe can be a little, the comments section can be a little positive support group, maybe with some ideas for how others have broken free and gotten back to just enjoying the hobby and their images that they're making. Well, till next time, this has been Nico Carver. I wish all of you clear skies.