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.

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. A straight drive screw turned at a constant rate won t produce a constant angular motion. This makes composing much easier and. Easelife 12 ft double door sliding barn door hardware kit heavy duty ultra hard sturdy easy install slide smoothly quietly fit double 36 wide door 12ft track double door kit 4 7 out of 5 stars 665 79 99 79.

The updated design has the camera mounted on the side of the top board. Nyx tracker the only inexpensive ready built barn door tracker of which i am aware is the 89 00 nyx tracker from nyx tech. You can however make a 6 wide board and use a 4 hinge but you may give up some stability. His plans were first published in sky telescope magazine in april 1975.

Cut your two blocks of wood pieces into 13 x 4 pieces. First cut the 500mm length in half and mount the hinge. The nyx tracker is a motorized barn door tracker used for astrophotography. There are plenty of solutions described out there on the internet.

Inexpensive and budget friendly it is useful for people interested in astrophotography but not ready to spend on expensive equipment. Gary seronik s analog barn door tracker but there s a catch. Known generically as a barn door tracking platform it s easy to make and works well for camera and lens 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. Ed and dennis used parts they had lying around. A barn door tracker mount is an inexpensive and very effective solution for taking long exposures of the night sky without producing star trails. Assembly setting up your door tracker.

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. This tracking mount follows the stars as they move through the sky.