So, in these strange days of lockdown the one thing that has been reasonably consistent is the clear skies. Unfortunately I broke my Crayford focusser on my telescope last month and that was the catalyst that prompted MJ to recommend the Skywatcher Star Adventurer. I got the Pro pack;
(Not advertising this company but thought it worth a mention as their customer service is great.)
My main issue with Astronomy is that I am lazy. There you go, it's in black and white. I love seeing the stars and have a great interest in what is up there but come that cold, clear night and the setting up, collimation and usual obsticles have recently won the battle over deciding whether or not to start the assembly and stay up. Also there is an unwritten law that states that whenever the best clear night is, it is always the night before an early start for work!
Enter the Star Adventurer. This is a small mount and tracking motor which follows the stars, meaning you can have a longer exposure without the risk of star trailing once you have polar alligned the mount.
I also bought a smaller tropod, the Velbon DV-7000. This is a mount used for video cameras but has an 8kg payload which means I can use the Star Adventurer (1.5kg), my camera (1kg) and space for a small refractor, which depending on how well I get on with the mount will determine the speed I get the refractor! Incidently the Star Adventurer mount only has a maximum payload of 5kg so a small scope is all it will ever accomodate. I removed the head off the tripod which may not have been strictly necessary as it is so steady but as it came off so easily it made sense to take off anything I didn't need. So my set up now looks like this:
This picture was taken with the tripod head still attached but gives you a good view of the tripod legs fully splayed. I wasn't expecting that but, regardless of the fact it's a tripping hazard in the dark (I'll be buying some flourescent tape!) it does make it remarkably steady for a £100 tripod.
This picture shows how the camera or telescope sits on the mount.
And finally just the tripod, mount and tracker, with the original head removed from the tripod.
The tracker has speeds for stars, solar and lunar tracking but also has various other modes for time-lapse photography. I haven't had chance to use the astro settings but have made a couple of timelapse videos which show how smooth the motor is.
The tracker also has internal workings that will operate your camera with the purchase of an additional cable between shutter and motor. I am fortunate in some ways as my Olympus OMD EM 10 has lots of creative settings within it so I intend to use the time lapse setting on the camera. I can set the exposure time and number of shots easily and on a screen, remembering to include "writing to card" time between each picture (my camera takes as long to write the image to the card as it does to take the exposure!). The camera has it's negatives being micro 4/3 and the issues regarding smaller sensor and noise issues. We will see how it turns out when I get a chance to try it in it's astro mode and I get to grips with the optimum settings for my camera.
Al
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