Timelapse Tests with Star Adventurer

[Mike]

Thanks Fay for lending me your Star Adventurer at DSC.

I did a couple of tests with it. One for timelapse panning and one for sidereal tracking. I made a short timelapse video out of each sequence. Here are the results. Raw images with no processing :

VIDEO 1

VIDEO 2

I obviously polar aligned on a star that wasn't Polaris as you can see it was off.

Overall I was very impressed with the Star Adventurer. Nicely engineered tiny driven mount head with some nice features. The only thing I was disappointed with was the timelapse feature that would only pan a maximum of 60º. I have been wondering if this limitation can be overcome somehow.

However, i'll definitely be getting one.

[Fay]

I may be reading it wrong, Mike, but on the instructions for timelapse it says it goes 90 deg and then reverses to go back 90 deg.

[Mike]

No it was definitely 60 degrees Fay.

[The Thing]

I seem to recall various increments for the rotation, really only useable if you use the built-in shutter control. Manual here.

[Mike]

Duncan it will only rotate beyond 60 degrees in sidereal, solar, lunar or 0.5x sidereal. The useful rates for time lapse photography, i.e. 2x, 4x 6x 12x will only go as far as 60 degrees then it will go back the other way. Bit naff and not very well thought out.

I'm already thinking of replacing the controller board with an Arduino and writing my own software for it.

[Kenny]

VIDEO 2

That is very cool! 

[Fay]

Mike dont know what happened with the SGL link, but it was regarding doing what you have just suggested with  Arduino

[Mike]

Fay I took a look at that. It was a project the guy started and never finished. However he has put up pictures of the internal workings which will help a lot. Thanks.

[Fay]

Oh good

[Fay]

Just remembered, I did a little dance in front of your time lapse, Mike, but it did not show up!

[RobertM]

Can-Can ?

[Kenny]

Mike - What camera and settings did you use for Video 2?

[Mike]

Kenny it was a Nikon D7000 with an f2.8 10.5mm fisheye lens. Shots were 10 seconds each with a 5 second gap in between. The wonky angle was due to fixing the camera to a fixed telescope bracket and it needed to be a ball head to allow full adjustment.

[Kenny]

Thanks. Surprised by how much detail was captured with only 10 seconds of data. The advantage of a truly dark site.