Losmandy StarLapse System

[griz11]

I decided to get back into astrophotography after many years of being away from it. Fifteen years to be exact and my how its progressed. Purchased a Losmandy StarLapse for my tracker. Modified the dovetail so it would bolt up to an Astrotrac wedge and mounted that on their portable pier system.

Its nice and lite looks heavy but its not. And very sturdy with the tension cables. Next step is to get some encoders and a pointing computer installed. The encoder for the main axis isn't a problem Losmandy sells those kits. However unless I want to get the additional axis I have to come up with a different way to use the standard camera mount. Since it has a shaft it can be encoded and so thats what I'm going to attempt to do. Ordered a 1 inch encoder disk with a properly sized hub to fit the shaft. I'm using the reader from the Losmandy kit and mounting the whole thing in a die cast aluminum box that also acts as the spacer I had to take out to mount the encoder wheel. Without the spacer the arms will flex enough so you can't tighten up your camera enough to keep it from moving. I'll have to drill a hole through the little case and cut a slot for the encoder cable to pass through but thats pretty easy to do. Going to mount it to the camera arm with double sided auto trim tape. There is no mechanical forces on it and I don't want to drill into my mount if possible. I'll mount the reader the same way. I'm going to hook the encoders up to an Argo Navis to get the position to my laptop. The Argo Navis also has mount modeling so that will be nice to have in addition to the pointing. I've taken one decent shot with it so far. I was very pleased with how it came out.

Should have the encoders all sorted this weekend just waiting on the encoder disk to get here. So I'm looking forward to many enjoyable nights with my rig.

Griz

[griz11]

The last pieces for the encoder project came in today. Did a test fit of the components and everything is good to go. Going to do some cutting and drilling on the project box tomorrow for the shaft and encoder cable slot and it will be ready to attach to the Argo Navis.

Tiny thing but I didn't have a lot of room to work with on the camera mount arms. Came in a huge box. I was wondering if they had shipped me the wrong thing at first. The actual box the wheel was in was 1 inch square and the outer box was 14 inches by 8 inches. Overkill in a big way.

Griz

[griz11]

Finished the install for the DEC encoder today. Went pretty smooth. A little bit of a balancing act getting the reader and wheel in there. Gotta put them in together there is not enough room otherwise.

Wish the Argo Navis would get here so I could test it out.

Griz

[perfrej]

Interesting project. What kind of encoders are they (I'm an encoder buff)?

/per

[laser_jock99]

Looks like a interesting project- I love this sort of thing.. Be sure to post some more widefield star pictures when it's up and running.

[griz11]

The encoder hardware is USDigital. One of their 1 inch hubdisk wheels and the em1 reader. The reader came with the Losmandy DSCH hardware Basically I just tried to get as close to the CPR of the Losmandy hardware as I could in the 1 inch wheel. I was looking at it further and decided to flip the box. Doing it that way makes it a ton easier to get the wheel and reader installed and adjusted. Didn't do it that way the first time becuase I didn't think I could get to the screws to tighten up the box. But if you rotate the saddle plate one of the holes in it will line up perfectly and allow this configuration. Its so much easier to get everything installed this way.. Easier to get the allen wrench in place to tighten up the hub and you can actually lay a measuring ruler in there to make sure its all square and the wheel is in the proper place in the reader.  I will have the Argo Navis within the next couple of weeks then its imaging time. The weather has been bad here for almost 2 weeks now so I really haven't missed anything. I'll spend a lot less time finding objects and more time imaging now. I entered the FIA/WEC Spirit of Le Mans photo contest. It was for an all expenses paid trip to the final race in Brazil. Took runner up and next year I'll be going to the race on a VIP pass for my effort.

http://www.fiawec.com/en/news/spirit-of-le-mans-photo-competition-winner-chosen_2635.html 

My other love is motorsports photography. Now if I can reprogram this wifi router to substitute for my notebook so I don't have to leave it outside I'll be very happy.

Griz

[griz11]

Bought a new enclosure. When I decided to flip it I had to cut another notch it looked crappy so I got another one. This time I ordered a black one. Looks better I think. My Argo shipped today so soon I'll be able to test it out.

Shot this one the other night. 2 7 minute exposures. A little drift if you zoom in. I'm going to start doing drift align with the longer lenses. I'm very happy with the mount. I did previews so they would come out jpeg and uploaded them to nova.astrometry.net and used that to get to my targets. Worked pretty good. It gets fairly slow at night though. But they say under 10 min for a solve. Used a couple of plug-ins someone suggested on another forum on these. HLVG to get rid of the CLS filter green cast and WhiteBal. Its stacked and processed totally in Ps. Did a stack of the lights and calibration frames then stacked those with the right modes. I'm going to use this method till I get up to speed with pixinsight.

The equipment is far better than the operator at this point

Griz

[griz11]

The StarLapse has been preforming great. I've done up to 10 minute subs so far with good results. If I don't blow the polar align its pretty much dead on. Had to adjust the worm lash. It was a little too sloppy. When I move it to a new position on the first image you'd see it drop back into position against the drive gear. Like a slip then it would steady up. I knew it was a little loose but wanted to actually see some problem before messing with it. Wanted a good baseline before I started tweaking on it. After the adjustment I haven't seen it again. Also the stars were a little out of round sometimes with the brighter ones before the adjustment. Now they are nice and round. Don't have an autoguider to test the PE and all but I suspect its quite low. The Argo Navis will be here any day now. I'll post when I test out that encoder set up. Hope it works. I spend way too much time looking and centering targets. Especially with my EF400.

Griz

[griz11]

The Argo is on the truck. Hope it doesn't take all day I can't wait to try out this encoder. The suspense is killing me

Griz

[griz11]

Here is a pic of the complete system.

Don't know if I'll add anything else. Hoping I can get away with just what I have now. Maybe rent a huge lens for a weekend sometimes. The pull of a nice refractor is strong however so who knows

Griz

[griz11]

Clouds parted enough for me to test out the Argo tonight. Worked great. Didn't try and do any imaging there was quite a bit of high thin clouds and they started getting thicker. But I did successfully point to several objects. Now in a couple of days when the moon is down and the sky is clear I'm ready to do some imaging.

Griz

[griz11]

Couple of pics of the finished rig.

Looks like I might get in a little imaging tonight seeing might not be so good but I'm going to try it out anyways.

Griz