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Haggus - Martin
member
Reged: 06/05/09
Posts: 27
Loc: Gatineau, Quebec, Canada
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Hi,
Recently I bought a DSLR camera but my scope doesn't track(lightbridge)... All I want is to have something so my camera would track. I have found the "barn-door tracker" on the internet. Is it a good choice to build one or is there something else I could buy(not too expensive) that would allow my camera to track.
Thank you,
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Thank you,
Martin
Meade LightBridge 8" Deluxe
Bushnell 8-16*40 Binos
45 degrees, 28.3 minutes North
75 degrees, 41.2 minutes West
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quantumac
sage
Reged: 12/17/07
Posts: 387
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Color me skeptical about using such a device for astrophotography, at least for any imager employing a long f/ratio. Anybody here ever successfully use such a contraption with a telescope?
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Scope: Meade 10" LX200R
Guide/Planetary Camera: Imaging Source DBK41AF02.AS
DSO Camera: QHY8
Guide Hardware: Celestron OAG, Shoestring Astronomy GPUSB
Software: Mac OS X, Starry Night Pro, Nebulosity, PHD Guiding, PixInsight, Astro IIDC. No Windows anything.
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Falcon-
sage
Reged: 09/11/09
Posts: 242
Loc: Gambier Island, BC, Canada
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Quantumac - They are generally *not* used with a telescope at all, but with standard camera lenses, especially wide angle lenses. I have not used one myself but I looked quite closely at them and intended to build one of my own (until I managed to find a CG-5 on sale).
A well built barn-door tracker (especially a double-arm version or the like) Should do reasonably well with 50mm lenses or so, possibly even longer then that, but even a 500mm refractor would certainly be too long.
There is an example here(not mine) of a 10-minute shot, on film, with a 50mm lens on a barn-door tracker. With shorter exposures and stacking I would think you could improve upon that quite a bit!
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Tasco 11TE-5 'Lunagrosso': 4.5" Newtonian, 900mm f/7.9
Meade DS-2114S: 4.5" Newtonian, 1000mm f/8.8
Galileoscope: 50mm Achromatic Refractor, 500mm f/10
Tasco EQ-2-like mount w/ clock drive
Celestron CG-5GT mount
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Nils_Lars
Post Laureate
Reged: 01/04/08
Posts: 3440
Loc: Santa Cruz Mountains , CA
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I would think that by the time you spent the money on all the parts and lets say you paid yourself for the time spent building it , you might be better off just getting a used CG-5 and that would give you ability to upgrade later on.
I have heard of people having success with one of these with the drive motor.
http://www.telescope.com/control/product/~category_id=mounts_and_tripods/~pcategory=accessories/~product_id=09055
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Erik
Orion Atlas Self Hypertuned (EQMOD)
Orion ED 80
Williams Optics VII reducer
Celestron 8" SCT
Orion Starshoot Autoguider
PHD guide
Canon 400D Hap Griffin Mod w/Baader filter
Astronomik clip-in LP filter and 12nm Ha
Stilleto CVF and Bahtinov mask
Tamron 75-300mm&28-80mm lenses
NexImage webcam
http://www.flickr.com/photos/31986095@N05/
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Falcon-
sage
Reged: 09/11/09
Posts: 242
Loc: Gambier Island, BC, Canada
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Ya - I used something similar for my first 7 months of astrophotography attempts. I have a 30-40 year old 3rd hand beat up EQ2-type mount with an AC clock drive. Mine has *terrible* periodic error, but it was enough, with wide-angle lenses (28mm, 50mm, etc) to get me started and learning the basics. Got a couple nifty milky-way shots with it!
I was looking at building a barn-door tracker as a way to get more accurate tracking than the beat up EQ2 that was able to give me... and as to cost equaling a CG-5, I do not think it is reasonable to consider your time in the equation unless you do not enjoy building things yourself. After all, if time spent on a hobby is "lost wages" most of us here are making a horrible business decision with all this astronomy stuff! :-P
That being said - I did indeed abandon my plans for a barn-door tracker when I found this price here for brand-new CG-5s...
So in my opinion a barn-door tracker is worth building *as a starter mount for wide angle imaging* and *if you enjoy building your own equipment*.
Edited by Falcon- (11/06/09 06:48 PM)
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s58y
Postmaster
Reged: 12/12/04
Posts: 5509
Loc: Eastern NY
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I also started with a barndoor tracker, while I was investigating real mounts, telescopes, etc. It took me three tries before I got a barndoor that worked well enough to shoot 2-minute exposures with an ancient 300mm f/2.8 camera lens and a canon DSLR.
At 300mm, yield was decent, but with an old 800mm lens, with 1-minute exposures, yield was only something like 15% good subexposures.
Sample barndoor pics: here
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Hutech 30D, SBIG ST-402 autoguider
SV80S, TV102iis
Old camera lenses: 800mm f/5.6, 180mm f/3.4
AP900, Barndoor tracker
http://www.pbase.com/s58y
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Jimmy2K63
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 04/26/09
Posts: 1193
Loc: Kentucky
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I'd also concurr with the advice on going with the CG-5 for longterm use. They used to make some commercial "barn door" trackers but I've not seen one in a long time. There is a lot less fooling around with a good mount as far as polar aligning it as well.
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http://astronomyguy63.blogspot.com/
LXD75 SN6-UHTC
Cave Astrola 10" f/5
Garrett 15x70/FarSight
Canon XS (1000D)
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drksky
super member
Reged: 09/01/09
Posts: 115
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When I was starting out, I built a manual barndoor out of about $20 worth of parts and got a few decent wide-angle shots by stacking a bunch of short subs.
I documented some of it on my blog.
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Tony C
AT8RC
C6-R
CG-5 ASGT
ST80 w/StarShoot Autoguider
Canon EOS 450D (Stock)
The Drinking Bird
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Falcon-
sage
Reged: 09/11/09
Posts: 242
Loc: Gambier Island, BC, Canada
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s58y: wow, 300mm is a lot longer then I would expect to get out of a barn-door tracker, and with some nice results too!
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Tasco 11TE-5 'Lunagrosso': 4.5" Newtonian, 900mm f/7.9
Meade DS-2114S: 4.5" Newtonian, 1000mm f/8.8
Galileoscope: 50mm Achromatic Refractor, 500mm f/10
Tasco EQ-2-like mount w/ clock drive
Celestron CG-5GT mount
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