How Long Time Barn Door Tracker

A barn door tracker also known as a haig or scotch mount is a device used to cancel out the diurnal motion of the earth for the observation or photography of astronomical objects it is a simple alternative to attaching a camera to a motorized equatorial mount.

How long time barn door tracker.

Barn door trackers have a long and storied history in amateur astronomy. 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. This tracking mount follows the stars as they move through the sky. A mean sidereal day is 23 hours 56 minutes 4 0916 seconds 23 9344696 hours this is the rate at which the stars appear to revolve around our planet termed diurnal motion and is the rate of travel required in the barn door mechanism.

Since the first one was invented back in 1976 they have been the go to solution for anybody who wants to shoot long exposures nightscapes without star trails on a budget. You can however make a 6 wide board and use a 4 hinge but you may give up some stability. The nyx tracker is a motorized barn door tracker used for astrophotography. Commercial star tracking mounts can cost tens of thousands of rands.

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. Cut your two blocks of wood pieces into 13 x 4 pieces.