My Astrotrac Advenuture

http://www.flickr.com/photos/79136331@N07/11236546755/After many months of deliberation and driving several members of MAC crazy, i took the plunge this week and bought myself an Astrotrac.
I have decided to do a bit of a blog on how I get on with it over the next few months.

To start with I went for the Holiday Special which I ordered from Stephen in K-Tec Telescopes.

I went for this package as i also wanted a good tripod and ball head for my other Photography work. So all that justified the 1175 euro price tag, or thats how i managed to convince my better half of it anyway.

My DSLR set up is as follows.

Canon 60d.
Sigma 10-20mm F4.5-5.6
Canon 100mm F2.8 Macro
Canon 70-300mm F4-5.6
I also intend to borrow a good L series lens for this blog, but more on that later (Michael you have been warned)

Astrotrac Holiday Pack contains

Astrotrac TT320X-AG
Astrotrac Polarscope
Manfrotto 055XPROB Tripod
Manfrotto 496 RC2 Ball Head
Manfrotto 410 JuniorGeared Head
Astrotrac 8xAA Battery Holder & Lead

First Night.

After doing the real man thing and disregarding the instructions i headed out to the garden. Typically half the street had their garden lights on. One man leaves 3 on for his dogs. so after several text messages i had some darkness.

I put the Sigma 10-20mm on the camera and set up everything as it looks in the picture on Astrotrac website.

So after shooting several shots and seeing stars trailing I headed back inside and read the manual.

That was Wednesday 4th Dec. Next entry - getting some fist shots - My Polar Alignment Adventure !


www.flickr.com/photos/79136331@N07/11236546755/

Thursday 5th December

After reading the Instructions and doing a lot of reading on line about setting up the Polar scope on the Astrotrac I set everything up again.
I was not expecting to have a clear sky but the great thing with this set up is it takes about 5 mins from picking it up in the spare room and taking that first shot in the garden.

Polar alignment has been a struggle for me. I had a loan of an EQ5-ED80 set up for the last few months and i really struggled to get it aligned. After getting some advice I did manage to do it and got some good shots. However I did feel that the set up was taking a log time, not to mention the weight of carrying it in and out of the house. As an imaging platform it was very good and Im sure anyone with a place outside the house to store it, be that a shed or an obsey would find it very rewarding. This however was a five min process.

So pointing the rig north i put the polar scope into its holder and turned it on. a quick twist moved the constellations around until the matched what i could see in the sky, and i used the slow motion controls on the gear-head to bring Polaris into the correct position. There is a further step to bring another two stars into play in the scope but in my light flooded estate i found these hard to see. So i left it at the rough alignment.

Attaching the Camera at this point was simple on the ball head, and i attached my Sigma 10-20mm lens opened out to f4 @ 10mm. ISO was set to 400 and using a wireless trigger (Gigga T Pro, highly recommend these, Amazon do them) i set the exposure to 4.5 mins

www.flickr.com/photos/79136331@N07/11236546615/

Hi,
Looking at the later pic, I'd say the adventure was worth it

Thanks Dave, Im having problems getting images onto this site, and Flickr makes a mess of my images. Ill try another site later on and post some pics.

I also took some stacked shots of M45 and the Orion Nebula which ill upload.

That's the way Dave, I have ben using my astrotrac for a few years now, you will find it dead handy to polar align in no time

Keith.

Super stuff Dave.

Great to see progress.

Cant wait til you pull out some great pics