Just realized my star trails were garbage for 8 nights because of one dumb setting
I kept getting these short, choppy star trails and blamed everything except the actual cause. I tried three different tripods, two lenses, and drove out to a spot near Joshua Tree twice thinking my backyard had too much light pollution. Turned out my interval timer was set to a 1 second gap between shots, which left a visible break in every single trail. I spent about 6 weeks (probably 14 hours of shooting and way more time cussing at my computer) before a guy in a Facebook group asked me one simple question about my timer. The fix took me 10 seconds. Everyone online says longer exposures are always better, but honestly a tiny gap is the real killer and nobody warns you. Has anyone else chased a problem for weeks only to find out it was one number on a screen?