Star Tracker Iii On A Tormach

[echesak]

There probably aren't a lot of astronomers, or astrophotographers here. But I thought I'd post this project any way, as there were some interesting machined parts that some may find interesting. I just recently sold my entire deep sky imaging set-up. For those wanting to see more take a look at my Astro pages here:

http://www.ericchesak.com/Galleries/Astro-Images

Well, after I sold it all, I wanted to keep some portable ability to be able to accurately track the motion of the stars, for long exposure photography. There are many similar devices on the market, but none really met my requirements of rigidity and accuracy. So I decided to design my own. This is the outcome.



It turns out to be very stable, tight and it tracks very accurately. I've been traveling so I haven't had time to perform any detailed tests, but a quick couple of test images indicates that the performance is precisely what I was looking for. I still plan to make a custom tripod for it. I've designed and built several of super stable tripods, so I'll just make a miniature version for this device. Here are a few 5 minute long test photos. The goal here is to move the mount at precisely the same rate as the Earth, following the motion of the stars. This is needed so that the stars are round pin points and not streaks or lines. I think it performed this duty pretty well:





For those interested in seeing more, take a look at the following gallery. I have many detailed photos of each part during and after machining:

http://www.ericchesak.com/Galleries/DIY/Star-Tracker-III

It was a lot of fun and seems to be a good performer. I'm looking forward to using it and moving on to my next machining project.

Eric

 

[Riaan]

Wonderful. What object is that?

 

[echesak]

The object in the top image is Jupiter, with a little cluster just to the lower right. I don't recall what the cluster is and I don't have the plate-solving software on my computer any more (to ID the location in the sky). But I know for sure that the bright object is Jupiter.

 

[Riaan]

Well it's lovely stuff, and your machining work looks amazing.

Living in the city in my neck of the woods we have too much haze and light polution to see anything but the the lower magnitude objects except midwinter when there are power failures, then it's slightly better. Nevertheless, I live vicariously through an old copy of SkyGlobe

 

[Riaan]

PS do you have a time and date on the top pic? Looks very much like the jewel box.

 

[echesak]

Thanks for taking a look... It was a lot of fun to design and build.

Yep. I feel your light pollution pains. I shot all my deep sky astro (http://www.ericchesak.com/Galleries/Astro-Images) from my light polluted back yard. But I used 3nm narrowband emission filters (Hydrogen Alpha, Oxygen III and Sulfur II) to help reduce the background levels. What I had invested in the filters alone, would have paid for about 1/4 of my Tormach. But even with these super deluxe filters, I wasn't able to get what I wanted from my back yard. Plus It seems that our Winter weather patterns have shifted somewhat. So my usual clear Winter nights have been cloudy and hazy, for the 3 years before I sold my set-up. I was used to getting 10-15 good imaging nights per month. But more recently, it was more like 5-7 nights for the whole Winter imaging season. I need about 5-10 nights to have enough data to assemble a good image. So instead of doing a couple good images per season, I was doing a couple seasons per image. So I sort of traded hobbies and bought the CNC machine to round out my garage machine shop. As it turns out, Machining is an all-weather hobby

As far as the cluster, I uploaded the image to http://nova.astrometry.net. It solved it and indicated that the cluster is ngc-2632, the Beehive Cluster, located in the constellation Cancer.

 

[Riaan]

That stuff is the dark side of the moon from over here. You got a nice shot of orion in though. Midwinter it zeniths right over my house.

 

[echesak]

Ah, Interesting. I've never seen the Southern skies, further South than -60 degrees . Have to put that on my Bucket List and take my Star Tracker along...