The goal of this project was to design and build an all-mechanical camera mount that would passively rotate at the same angular speed that the earth rotates to facilitate taking consecutive astrophotography images with minimal blur. When the tracker rotational axis was properly aligned with the North Star, I was able to take low-noise long-exposure images one-after-another for 7-8 hours. I then “stacked” the images to get a final image with an equivalent exposure time of many hours.
My homemade sky tracking gizmo.
This is the Andromeda Galaxy. At 2.5 million light-years away from the earth. I took about 840 images with a Nikon 300mm, f2.8 manual focus lens for a combined exposure time of about 7 hours.
This is the Orion Nebula. It is about 1,340 light years away from earth. This image is about a 7 hour exposure made by stacking 30 second sub-exposures taken with a Nikon 600mm, f4 manual focus lens.
Michael Fuchs Personal Projects 