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Building a barn door tracker

pipnina

By pipnina
in DIY Astronomer

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pipnina

pipnina

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I've been looking at building a barn door tracker with my dad for this winter when Orion comes around again, but there seem to be a lot of variations on the design with varying levels of accuracy and I'm not sure which is the "Best" if there is in fact a "Best".

I'm also not sure how to make it or how it would fit onto my tripod (or if i'll need to make a method for it to stand up as part of the kit), so if you know of any good guides to making an accurate type of barn door I'd love to read them.

As it progresses, I'll post images here and when it's complete, I'll take some test shots in preparation for orion!

    ~pip

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pipnina

pipnina

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I built one for capturing comet Lovejoy. Currently it is manual though I have everything to motorised it using arduino as a project for a rainy day.

Build thread here.

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/222131-my-barn-door-build/page-1#entry7

What are you thinking of using to image with?

I intend to use my DSLR- A Nikon D3200 with the stock lens.

Pip

Good luck with your project. If the performance is half as good as the claims, which I have no reason to doubt, you'll have a great bit of kit.

Paul

That's the plan!

Thanks for those links! I'll read them now.

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pipnina

pipnina

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I need to refine my technique, but I'm still happy with this result:

http://nova.astrometry.net/user_images/735481#original

This is with a barn door tracker? If so, I'm ever more eager to get mine done!

I've already found a very nice guide to build mine by: http://home.comcast.net/~w7apd/barndoor.html

It will be some task, but worth it in the end should I pull it off!

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pipnina

pipnina

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Reading one of your other threads, what are your expectations for this barn door.

How many minutes are you hoping for in a single exsposure?

(Assuming something like a 50mm lens).

About 2-4 minutes. My DSLR would builds up rather segnificant dark current after that (i've tested) and the sky would probably become saturated.

Although, with the Type 4 double-arm (that I'm trying to find designs for currently, the one I found in a post above doesn't give dimensions) all sources seem to point towards as much as 60 minutes of accurate tracking provided it's built and polar-aligned properly.

Although, if I built a standard isosceles single-arm, it loses tracking afer about 15 minutes if I remember correcltly?

Perhaps I could build one of them and use a microcontroller to change the motor speed over time... hmmm.

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pipnina

pipnina

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Take a look at the link I already gave of my build you should read Fred's reply and link in it. Much easier way to address tangent drift.

I click the link and it redirects me to a "You do not have permission to view this" page. http://i.imgur.com/7PQgZAo.png

Not sure why this is happening, but if you don't know what's going on either could you copy-paste what was said in that thread please?

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