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"Lodriguss' Laws of Astrophotography"

Jerry Lodriguss is an excellent astrophotographer and wonderful storyteller. Check his website for more stories, observations and humour.

• "It's always clear at full moon."
• "If it's completely clear all day, it will be cloudy that night."
• "Three mutually exclusive things: not having to go to work the next day, no clouds, no moon."
• "If it's clear with no moon, it will be bitterly cold and the wind will be blowing like a hurricane."
• "While manually guiding, the mount will track perfectly forever, until you look away for a second."
• "The guiding reticle battery will always die just past the half-way point of the exposure."
• "If you hear a strange noise and startle during an exposure, you will always bump the scope, and ruin the photo, and it will always be just before the end of a two hour exposure."
• "Any speck of dust or dirt inside the tube assembly will end up on the film's emulsion side during the exposure."
• "Perfect polar alignment means you will kick the tripod leg in the dark."
• "Perfectly guided two hour exposures will be taken on x-sync shutter setting."
• "Perfectly guided photos will be out of focus."
• "Perfectly focused photos will have field rotation."
• "Perfectly aligned, focused, guided, and exposed photos will be ruined by the lab."
• "No amount of planning, practice or expertise can replace dumb luck."
• Rain clouds gather where astronomers assemble, and scatter when the latter disperse.
• Clear skies when polar aligning, cloudy skies just when you are ready to take the first shot.
• Being very sure that you have packed every equipment you need for your trip, usually means that one tiny but essential screwbolt got left behind.
• Urban development always appears at the moment when and where astronomers discover a nice dark area that no one bothered about for years.