First shot with barndoor

I use the rifle scope to sight in Polaris, you can see the stars in the lower left seem to track okay, the further out from this point the longer the trails get. I am shooting in the direction of Cassiopeia. The bright light to the right is the moon, I'm just testing this, so the moon light isn't an issue.
Shot at 18mm, f/5.0 45 seconds
Any suggestions?

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Okay since I was pointed at Polaris, I assume this is whay the stars on the left didn't have trails...and it makes sense that the further out, the trails would be longer. So the tracker must not have been setup right, its almost as if the camera was stationary.

Jimmy,
Is the scope alligned with the hinge? How tight is the hinge? is there much play in hinge?
also, I noticed the some of the trails appear to move in different directions, possibly from movement when you are rotating the wheel...I have a similar setup and found that my cheep tripod is not solid enough to pull off manually turning mine. these are just my best guesses, so keep us posted on your progress!

best luck,
Doug

stickman513 wrote in post #13397094
Jimmy,
Is the scope alligned with the hinge? How tight is the hinge? is there much play in hinge?
also, I noticed the some of the trails appear to move in different directions, possibly from movement when you are rotating the wheel...I have a similar setup and found that my cheep tripod is not solid enough to pull off manually turning mine. these are just my best guesses, so keep us posted on your progress!

best luck,
Doug

The hinge is tight, the scope is in line with the hinge as best as I could. I don't know of anyway to test this other than the results of the photo's.

Next time I'll attached some weight to the tripod, and pay more attention to the turning of the tracking wheel.

Doug, thanks for the reply

Math to the rescue.
In 45 seconds, the world rotates about 0.2 degrees. Just measuring off the screen, it looks like your trails are about 0.4 degrees long. So, my guess would be that you turned the wheel the wrong way at the right rate.

Steve.

the jimmy wrote in post #13402945
The hinge is tight, the scope is in line with the hinge as best as I could. I don't know of anyway to test this other than the results of the photo's.

Next time I'll attached some weight to the tripod, and pay more attention to the turning of the tracking wheel.

Doug, thanks for the reply

Is the hinge pin removable? If so, you could try removing the pin and sighting through the hole to something a long ways away and centering it, then centering the same object in the scope. Easiest to do in daylight of course...

archer1960 wrote in post #13407178
Is the hinge pin removable? If so, you could try removing the pin and sighting through the hole to something a long ways away and centering it, then centering the same object in the scope. Easiest to do in daylight of course...

Interesting thought, I did use a center punch to "ping" the hinge at various points to get it tight, so I'll se if I can still remove that

Jimmy,
you might want to consider building a wedge to make it easier to align you tracker as well. I live within 10 miles of the 45th parrallel so it was pretty easy for me, and since i live in fairly dark sky area and shoot shorter exposures and stack them it works well for me.
Hope your making progress with this project,
Doug