Barn Door Tracker Plans

It s called the tangent error and here s how some of our favorite diy barn door trackers solved it.

Barn door tracker plans.

You can however make a 6 wide board and use a 4 hinge but you may give up some stability. First cut the 500mm length in half and mount the hinge. The updated design has the camera mounted on the side of the top board. If you want a barn door but don t wish to build one from scratch this is your only option.

Known generically as a barn door tracking platform it s easy to make and works well for camera and lens astrophotography. Cut your two blocks of wood pieces into 13 x 4 pieces. The nyx tracker is a motorized barn door tracker used for astrophotography. The nyx tracker uses a curved drive screw which eliminates the need for a double arm design.

Modified versions of the tracker were published in the magazine s february 1988 and june 2007 editions. This makes composing much easier and. The barn door tracker was created by george haig. I built the tracker shown here based on one recently made by ohio telescope maker ed jones and on a platform built by sky telescope s dennis di cicco in the mid 1980s.

Gary seronik s analog barn door tracker but there s a catch. Assembly setting up your door tracker. Inexpensive and budget friendly it is useful for people interested in astrophotography but not ready to spend on expensive equipment. Make sure everything is square and moves freely clap the 2 hinged boards together and shout action a few times like they do when making movies if it makes a nice clack sound it should work well for a star tracker now measure 228 55mm from the center of the hinge pin down the middle of the board and mark the drive rod holes do this on.

A barn door tracker mount is an inexpensive and very effective solution for taking long exposures of the night sky without producing star trails. Ed and dennis used parts they had lying around. There are plenty of solutions described out there on the internet. Nyx tracker the only inexpensive ready built barn door tracker of which i am aware is the 89 00 nyx tracker from nyx tech.

A straight drive screw turned at a constant rate won t produce a constant angular motion. His plans were first published in sky telescope magazine in april 1975.