Barn Door Tracker Plans

A straight drive screw turned at a constant rate won t produce a constant angular motion.

Barn door tracker plans.

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. First cut the 500mm length in half and mount the hinge. Assembly setting up your door tracker.

Inexpensive and budget friendly it is useful for people interested in astrophotography but not ready to spend on expensive equipment. This makes composing much easier and. Cut your two blocks of wood pieces into 13 x 4 pieces. This tracking mount follows the stars as they move through the sky.

A barn door tracker mount is an inexpensive and very effective solution for taking long exposures of the night sky without producing star trails. 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. The nyx tracker is a motorized barn door tracker used for astrophotography. It s called the tangent error and here s how some of our favorite diy barn door trackers solved it.

His plans were first published in sky telescope magazine in april 1975. The nyx tracker uses a curved drive screw which eliminates the need for a double arm design. 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. 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.

The updated design has the camera mounted on the side of the top board. If you want a barn door but don t wish to build one from scratch this is your only option. You can however make a 6 wide board and use a 4 hinge but you may give up some stability. There are plenty of solutions described out there on the internet.

Make sure everything is square and moves freely clap the 2 hinged boards together and shout action a few times like they do when making movies if it makes a nice clack sound it should work well for a star tracker now measure 228 55mm from the center of the hinge pin down the middle of the board and mark the drive rod holes do this on. Known generically as a barn door tracking platform it s easy to make and works well for camera and lens astrophotography.