Motorized altazimuth mount & DSLR

[Munkie]

Good evening all,

I have another newbie question here.

I have a motorized altazimuth mount and I was doing to make a dovetail and mounting plate at work so I can attach a DSLR to it so I can take long exposures at night.

But after reading up several sites I have seen wedges mentioned, Now being a newbie my kit anit great and I dont want to spend £££ on a wedge when I am not fully sure of its usage.

So my question is do I need a wedge or can I attach the camera on the mount and still manage long exposures like 5mins of something.

Thanks for reading.

[RobertC]

You can always mount it as piggyback or simply just mount it to be prime focus.

[brantuk]

Which mount is it that you have? Usually alt/az mounts produce star trails after about 20secs exposure. For planets you'd be ok cos you'd use very short exposures (sub second) when imaging them. Even equatorial mounts that are accurately polar aligned need to be guided (by a separate guide scope and guide camera) to eliminate trailing on long exposures.

But if you want long exposures of 5 mins then really it has to be either an equatorial mount, or an alt/az mount on a wedge and with the software to switch to eq mode. A wedge simply elevates the mount base to your latitude on Earth in order to facilitate polar alignment. Hth

[Munkie]

This is the mount I have CLICKY CLICKY ME

From further reading up tonight I believe I can catch the milky way etc by about doing 30sec exposures and then stacking, is that correct?

If I can only capture planets/moon then at least that's a start on my mount.