Barn Door Tracker Astrophotography

Assembly setting up your door tracker.

Barn door tracker astrophotography.

Cut your two blocks of wood pieces into 13 x 4 pieces. It s called the tangent error and here s how some of our favorite diy barn door trackers solved it. A barn door tracker also known as a haig or scotch mount is a device that slowly rotates a camera allowing it to track the stars so it can take long exposure photographs of the night sky. I ve taken a time lapse here and a moon picture there but inspired by the folks over at r astrophotography i wanted to take it to the next level.

The nyx tracker is a motorized barn door tracker used for astrophotography. The design described here takes the best parts from all of these including. You can however make a 6 wide board and use a 4 hinge but you may give up some stability. This tracking mount follows the stars as they move through the sky.

That means we want to spin our barn door tracker at a rate of 360 degrees every 24 hours which comes out to be 0 25 degrees per minute. A barn door tracker for astrophotography. All of the images on this website were taken without a telescope. Barn door tracker build guide for astrophotography.

Inexpensive and budget friendly it is useful for people interested in astrophotography but not ready to spend on expensive equipment. There are plenty of solutions described out there on the internet. By theron wierenga view in digital edition skip to the extras. A straight drive screw turned at a constant rate won t produce a constant angular motion.

Noctilove is a website devoted to low light photography and astrophotography with a barn door tracker. If you have a dslr camera and are interested in astronomy you ve probably considered dipping a toe into the astrophotography waters. Just a regular dslr and lens. You ll find images of comets meteors galaxies and nebulae as well as night landscapes aurora noctilucent clouds and lightning.

A barn door tracker mount is an inexpensive and very effective solution for taking long exposures of the night sky without producing star trails. Making a cheap and simple barn door star tracker with software tangent correction for astrophotography i like to mix hobbies so naturally i ve been eying astrophotography for a while.