Recent content by kena

Acratech GXP Ball head does everything but is quite pricey at over £500.

Has to Mark. He has taught me an awful lot over the last few years and he has a wicked sense of humour.

Not that I know of. I've had this one for 2 years now. Due to change next summer. Thinking of going down the SUV route again.

Rolex Submariner Bi-metal

My latest toy

Thanks Machete. If live local to myself and supply all the materials I will certainly have a go. I enjoyed this little project. The mount is actually more stable than I thought, the image above was just due to my inexperience and stacking abilities with deep sky stacker. I have binned the images...

Orion Nebula last night. Obviously some vibration on this that I need to work out. 10 x 30 sec subs and 10 x 30 sec darks stacked in DSS. Iso 1600 F5.6 @ 400mm . Still a lot to learn with imaging and processing afterwards. Not too bad for a first attempt using the barn door tracker.

I'm no expert by any means but from what I have read on some astro forums, to get detail in the planet you will lose the moons in your shot. To get the moons in the shot Jupiter will be blown out with no detail, just like a normal star. Hope that makes sense.

Did some more testing tonight but used my 24-70L F2.8 lens. I have edited the 2 images below in photoshop. I managed about half an hour before the clouds rolled in. same location as the previous images, my back garden which is in a heavily light polluted area. I made a better job of the focusing...

I used the plans found here: http://www.garyseronik.com/?q=node/52 The stepper drives the small cog at 4 RPM which in turn drives the larger cog at 1 RPM. The brass rod is M5 threaded. There is a small M5 blind nut inserted in the larger cog which is threaded onto the brass rod. As the cogs turn...

It tells you in the post above each image. 1, 2 and 3 minutes. It can be difficult to a newcomer like me to get the focus right, I just need to keep practicing.

I still had some problems with stars that were higher in the sky. I tried to line up with cassiopeaia but I couldn't get the angle due to the equipment catching the tracker so I have made some adjustments today.

A few pics testing the tracker in the garden the other night. I didn't nail the focus but I wasn't really bothered about that just yet. I wanted to see how well the tracker would track the stars. I lined it up with The celestial north pole and tracked the brightest star I could see which was...

Yes Drew, I did some testing in the back garden the other night. Nothing brilliant as I was just after testing the tracking abilities. The tracking was spot on up to 3 mins. I didn't test any longer than that, maybe next time. I have made a few modifications due to minor problems when testing. I...

If anyone would like to have a go at making one of these please don't hesitate to ask. I'd be glad to help out. I am going to make the plywood platforms again but a bit tidier this next time. It should be a lot easier next time due to lessons learned making the first one.