ngl that "ignorance was bliss" part hit me right in the wallet lol. i remember my first few weeks of astro where i thought my kit lens photos were actually good. then i saw a single tracked shot of the Orion nebula and it was like realizing you've been wearing your shirt inside out all day. i actually tried to stack 200 untracked 2 second subs of the Pleiades once and ended up with something that looked like a blurry ghost sneezed on my screen. it's brutal how fast this hobby goes from "this is cool" to "i need a star tracker or i'm quitting.