35mm f1.8 lens (£129) plus home made barn door tracking mount?

[JezGray]

Hi all - very pleased to have found this forum! Some advice would be appreciated - I'm not in a budget situation to spend £hundreds on very good gear so am definitely trying to do this on a bit of a shoestring with the equipment I currently own already (an old Nikon D80, a good 135mm f2.8 lens, the kit 18-55mm lens, a fairly good tripod, and a Skywatcher Explorer 130 with 6" reflector on EQ2 mount and no tracking motor which is obviously very limiting!).

There are lots of 35mm f1.8 lenses available fairly cheaply (I'm watching one on ebay priced at £129), and I'm thinking of buying one, but it's pretty clear that to really start taking decent night sky photos of any sort I need to organise a half decent tracking mount first. There are some good guides around for making a cheap barn door style tracker, has anyone made and used one?

Or would you advise buying one of these instead (I'm thinking this would be a tiny upgrade from the that I currently have)? And could this be used with a camera via a dovetail adapter, instead of the OTA?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SKY-WATCHER-HERITAGE-114P-NEWTONIAN-REFLECTOR-TELESCOPE/dp/B00AWS6FHW

Maybe the Heritage-90 cassegrain version of this is better? The three attached pics are the best I've been able to manage so far, and am on a very steep learning curve!! the last one was taken with the kit lens and a wide angle convertor on it - the coma is awful, a shame as I think I have the double cluster in the top left as well as the Pleiades

TIA everyone

[JezGray]

I've heard of people attaching a DSLR to these - with a decent lens it could provide a cheap GoTo tracking mount?

[Putaendo Patrick]

Making your own barn door is very possible, and you can achieve excellent results. It does however depend on your handicraft skills, patience, access to tools etc.

Personally I would experiment in this direction first rather than buy the 114 Heritage. Ultimately you may want something more precise in the future, such as the Skywatcher Star Adventurer or Vixen Polarie, although these are more expensive.

[happy-kat]

I have both the Virtuoso mount and a home made barn door tracker. There is a link to my barn door build in my signature. I am currently still trying to get my Virtuoso to track properly in altitude, I am getting some slipping whe using the L bracket and a camera with vintage 50mm lens (fine for visual but pushing the mount to try what it can do image wise), I now have a dovetail bar to use which is waiting to be tested to see if with better balance it will track good enough in altitude as well as azumith so i can get 30-45 second exspoure lengths. Though I have managed 3 minutes once with the same lens on my barn door mount which is manual. So a home made barn door mount with motors has the potential to perform better, depends on your DIY skills. You also have an EQ mount which you could motorise on the RA axis and use with your camera and a lens for not a lot of costs perhaps. Vintage camera lens are what I'm using as all manual is fine and they are much cheaper.