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Old 28-11-06, 08:05
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Dave Smith Dave Smith is offline  
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Maldon, Essex
Age: 85
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Don said "Now I just have to figure out tracking as I have a 200mm lens."

Hi Don

There a few methods of tracking the stars in order to get photos. Probably the easiest is to mount the camera on top of a driven telescope. If you don't already have an astronomical telescope then this would be the most expensive option. It is still possible to track with an undriven telescope provided a way to mount a camera on the telescope can be devised and the scope has slow motion hand controlled drives. It is better, but not essential if the scope is on an equatorial mount. To keep the camera accurately pointing you would have the scope looking at any star in a southerly direction and using the hand controls keep the star centred in the eyepiece while the camera is taking the exposure.

Most astro photos that I have taken are with the camera mounted on top of a driven scope. However, the Orion Nebula photo (see earlier post) was taken using a small driven mount that only takes the camera. Again it is not a cheap option but I have chosen it because I am taking it to Australia next April and it needs to be light enough to fit in my airline baggage allowance. I wouldn't recommend it as a method in other more normal circumstances as I am sure that for the same price (~£500) a small driven scope could be purchased which of course means you can look through it at all the wonderful sights there are in the sky.

A much cheaper option is to make (or possibly buy) a barn door mount (sometimes called a scotch mount). Here are a couple of URLs where there are full details. The photos taken with them are very impressive.


http://www.tucsonastronomy.org/barndoor.html
http://www.astronomyboy.com/barndoor/

I hope that is of some help.

Dave
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