Nano Tracker

[Mickoid]

I've been very impressed with this little Nano Tracker I purchased several weeks back but have had little chance with the weather recently to really give it a good go.

After a couple of goes at making polar alignment a bit easier, I have come up with an adapted guide scope which I can attach to my tripod (see photo). The scope works better than the small sight hole that is built into the tracker but it is still hit and miss to a certain degree.

Saturday night was supposed to be clear with a near quarter moon until about 3.00am or so but of course Murphy's Law came into play and by the time I had set my rig up I could see clouds building up to the west.

Sure enough I ended up shooting these shots through high cloud until it thickened up too much and I packed everything away.

I thought I would have a go at M31 and I had to wait until it rose above the horizon, which isn't very high from Victoria and I couldn't wait for it's maximum elevation because thickening cloud was approaching. However I managed to shoot it through thin cloud before it was hidden completely.

Tarantula and the Pleiades were just shots in desperation. Exposure details were:

M31: 15 X 30 secs @ 3200iso 500mm f8 Modded Canon 550d
Tarantula Nebula: 8 X 30 secs @ 3200iso 500mm f8 Modded Canon 550d
Pleiades: 17 X 30 secs @ 6400iso 250mm f5.6 Unmodded Canon 550d.
Tracker with guide scope: 1 X 1/200 sec w/flash @ 400iso 55mm f5.6 Unmodded Canon 550d (he, he!)

[sil]

Nice shots, surprised the pleiades didn't reveal more structure for 30s exposures. Love the tarantula, very interesting region.

[Mickoid]

Thanks Sil, for most of those 30 sec subs on Pleiades I could hardly see the cluster due to the cloud. As I said, I took it in pure desperation, there wasn't much available to shoot by then but you're right normally there would have been more nebulosity revealed.

[silv]

Finally you got to go explore with the Nano Tracker!
The results are very encouraging, don't you think?
Here's to many more and cloud-wise better sessions :2thumbs:

Btw. would you mind posting a photo of your setup including the "finder scope"?

[Anth10]

Despite the conditions attempting to foil your plans your M31 catch is quite impressive. Good colour in the tarantula image too. This setup makes for great wide field stuff, look forward to darker skies hey... Nice work.

[Mickoid]

Thanks Annette and Anth, yes, I am looking forward to a session when the moon and clouds can't be blamed for preventing the nano tracker displaying its full potential. The only cons I see with this unit is a small payload and difficult polar alignment but that's a compromise for a small compact tracker. I'll post some shots of the guide scope attachment as soon as I take a picture of it.