Sky-Watcher reports that these batteries can power the mount for up to 72 hours, more than enough time for a night or imaging or two. I found the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Pro to deliver an exceptional user experience, right out of the box. The hardware and premium finishes of this portable star tracker really stood out to me, and I love the mounting bar and counterweight kit.
Fornax is a company based out of Hungary, and they are no stranger to astronomical equipment. Fornax has been manufacturing astronomical mounts for nearly 20 years, working on professional astronomical projects such as the HATNet Exoplanet Survey Hungarian Automated Telescope for discovering exoplanets. It uses a friction motor drive system that slowly sweeps an arm across the base of the mount.
The fine friction strip helps the LighTrack II maintain balance, and was designed with strict production tolerances. Like the other star trackers mentioned, the LighTrack II has 4 tracking speeds. Sidereal, Solar, Lunar, and Half. For example, if you wanted to capture an interesting wide-angle landscape, but want to expose the night sky longer — you can, without the landscape being blurred. The bundle I received from Fervent Astronomy included the MMW wedge to mount the tracker to my tripod, and the counterweight kit that I have not tested yet.
The hardware is impressive, from the aluminum alloy components to the carbon-composite plastic housing for the electronics. The first is, this mount requires an external 12V power supply. There is no internal battery inside of the LighTrack II. The second is that the LighTrack II will only track your subject for minutes, before having to return the tracking arm to its starting position.
Luckily, you can use the panning control knob of your ball head to keep the camera stationary during this process. Fornax lists that peak-to-peak unguided tracking error is less than 2 arcseconds in 8 minutes. The images were 3-minutes each at an effective focal length of mm with my camera system, and the unguided exposures were excellent.
The iOptron SkyGuider Pro full package includes the wedge, polar scope, and counterweight package. These items must be added on to the original price of the LighTrack II mount and purchased as a bundle. Due to its increased payload capacity, autoguiding capability, and accurate tracking, you may want to consider it to be a bridge between a camera tracker and a traditional equatorial telescope mount.
Here are the bare-bones specs of the star trackers mentioned in this post. In reality, I believe all of these trackers could handle a 2-minute exposure using an even longer lens. I realize that many people are accustomed to traveling with an external power supply for various devices, but I am not one of them. If you want to travel to a remote location with the LighTrack II, be prepared to power the mount using the cigarette lighter plug from your car.
In the end, the best camera tracker for astrophotography will always be the one you use the most. There are new tracking camera mounts popping up every year. The models discussed in this post are not the only options available. Here is a short list of some of the other star trackers available today:. Thank you Trevor for all this information. I followed your recommendations and bought a SkyGuider Pro a year ago: what an impressive portable mount! I added a support to use my Pole Master but I kept the polar finder to travel.
In this load range a CEM25 is a better choice. Thank you, because all your recommendations help us to avoid buying mistakes in this expensive hobby. Finally got to use it a few weeks back and am pleased with the results. It holds 11 pounds and does have the port for guiding but I am not at that level yet…. Would be great to review that system some time in the future…. Do you know if there is an add on the would work with the Skyguider Pro.
Look up the specs here — this works with the GoToNova. Would it be possible to get some really wide field shots with a dedicated astro camera? Hi Trevor, very informative. Which would be the easiest for a beginner to use. I have a mm zoom lens that I want to try this out on not pro grade — so not so heavy. But want to consider the option of getting a or mm L lens in future if this works out.
Hi Sri, all of the star trackers mentioned in this article are pretty easy to use out of the gate. The biggest hurdle early on, will be the polar alignment procedure.
These days, I find myself reaching for the Star Adventurer first — and that says a lot about how quick and painless it is to use! I love the reviews! It is readily available on Amazon in the US, so there are a lot of people like me who got it and image with it. I have avoided their GoTo products since they do seem pricey, but the Polarie is a standout rare entry level offer from them imo.
But I use it with my big full frame Nikon D with vertical grip and the Rokinon 24mm which is not a light lens. You can program several different modes, hit run, and then the device will shut off the wifi to save battery power and begin running the program.
For example, you can use it to make a time lapse, while it pans the camera, creating a really cool effect that you otherwise need to buy expensive and bulky rail systems to shoot. I almost always shoot wide angle night shots though. Another one to consider is the Sky-Watcher AZ-GTi, which will calibrate from pointing it one or two stars and has a GoTo facility… also currently quite cheap.
Any recommendation on GoTo Tracker? Pros and Cons? I am looking for something not expensive that I want to start with DSLR and later wanted to add telescope.
How so? What additional requirements are required over the non-iPolar unit? Are they hard to over come? To use iPolar, you need to connect the device to your computer and run the software. Some people may not want to lose the freedom of just manually polar aligning the mount and leaving the computer at home. However, it makes sense if it is your primary astrophotography mount. If you have a simplier set around 1.
Speaking of the weight, let me share my tougts on this: Around its max capacity, the alignment knobs are a disaster — with its normal tripod see astrobackyard full review on StarAdventurer. Im not sure if my stuff is not faulty in some way — at least the fine tune knobs, but i needed to fine tune the alignment in every 5 shots. Which is of course exhausting. What can you expect without guiding?
Im using usually — Bortle just outside of Budapest — but when i need to go to 45sec expo, i usually go up for Please do not comment my post-processing errors — i know… :D. What about the Benro Polaris currently on kickstarter? Now, it will display information about the selected object star at the left side of the interface.
It provides information about RA, Declination, Azimuth, Altitude, constellation, distance in light years , hour angle, magnitude, and many other parameters. It comes with many tools that helps to analyze solar system trajectories, asteroids and comets, moon phases, planet positions, and many more things. Once you are done with tracking desired star or space object, you can save the related information in CCF files.
Aciqra is another free star locating and tracking software. It is one of the simplest star tracking tools of this list. To use this software for star tracking, you just need to select a star. As you do that, the corresponding information will be available on its interface.
By using the same procedure, you can have all these mentioned information about other space objects also. In addition to star tracking, you can also analyze deep sky objects, solar system, path of the selected object, etc.
It also lets you search for an object. Just like many other software of this list, it lets you visualize space with equatorial and horizontal grid on sky map.
You can store the current sky map as an image in BMP format. SpaceEngine is also a considerably good star tracking software. After launching the software, just click on any visible star to get relative information, including name, type, distance, mass, apparent and absolute magnitude, luminosity, temperature, etc. To visualize space elements, you can have projection of the object in four different styles, that are perspective, fish eye, cylindrical, and cubemap.
Not only this, it also supports dual-window view of objects with same projection style. There is a lot more things to explore in this star locating software , which you can check out by visiting its home page. WorldWide Telescope is another software available for free to track stars and many other space objects.
Using this software, you can explore earth, planets, solar system, constellations, galaxies, black holes, etc. You can directly right click on any visible star to have information related to it. Just like aforementioned software, it also provides you information about the physical location of the star, such as azimuth, RA, declination, altitude, distance , etc.
Also, it displays the properties of the selected star, such as its magnitude, rise, transit, set period , etc. This software is best suited for PCs having mounted graphic cards, since it provides high quality graphic imagery of space objects. It can run on PC without graphic card, but may lag, depending on the processor.
Night Vision is another option for free, cross platform star tracking software available for Windows, Linux, and Mac. It is another software that helps to get information about constellations, stars, deep sky objects, solar system, and other celestial objects. You can have animated imagery of the universe in past, present, or future.
Gaia Sky is another star tracking and locating software for Windows. As you open this software, it shows an attractive scene of the universe. Now, as you right click on any celestial object, you can access two options named Select object and Go to object. To get information about the star, click on Select object option.
Now, it will display related information on the screen, such as star id, apparent and absolute magnitude, distance from earth, radius, RA, declination , etc. It comes with some preloaded Python scripts, that lets you perform visibility test, star brightness test, text test, guiposition test, etc.
Tuba is also a good choice as free star location finder software for Windows. As you open this software, you will have a nice and clear view of the Universe full of stars, planets, comets, and other celestial objects. It also displays stars and constellations. To get information about celestial objects, right click on the interface of this software and adjust various given sliders, that help to filter out space objects which are not in the specified range.
Now, click on the star to have information about its constellation, magnitude, RA, Declination, etc. This software shows you information about only those stars which appear on its interface with their names. Also, you can plot the FOVs at 10, 7, 5, and 3 degrees at the same time. As is with other software, it also lets you customize space view for better analysis. Home Page. Download Page. About Us. Provide details to get this offer. With AS! The interface is a bit confusing, particularly in the beginning, but it is easy to navigate through the different steps for the stacking.
Unfortunately, AS! Lynkeos is perhaps the only freeware planetary stacker software for Mac OS X, sparing you from turning to Windows for using Autostakkert!. The interface is quite intuitive to navigate, but not when it comes to performing the different tasks. On the other hand, it offers a deconvolution method and wavelet sharpening, a must-have for a planetary stacker. Definitely worth having a look at it if you are a Mac user. SiriL is a freeware, cross-platform, astrophotography package that will let you calibrate, stack, and develop deep sky astrophotography images.
While not as easy and intuitive as Sequator or DSS, it offers a lot of options and produces good results. There is an active community, and it is under constant development. With Astro Pixel Processor APP , you step in the realm of full-grown astrophotography packages, with many advanced options and methods to calibrate, stack, and post-process your deep-sky images.
When it comes to astrophotography, PixInsight is the software of reference against which all others are measured. It offers everything you may possibly need to produce pro graded images, and it is objectively the best software in the field. But user experience can be frustrating, as the learning curve is very steep, the editing is long and convoluted, and your computer must be quite recent and powerful to make it run smoothly.
In this article, we have covered the most popular astrophotography stackers available on the market, both freeware and commercial. And while Windows users have the more extensive choice, some notable stackers are available for Mac and even Linux users. Andrea Minoia works as a researcher in a Belgian university by day and is a keen amateur astrophotographer by night. He is most interested in deep sky photography with low budget equipment and in helping beginners along their journey under the stars.
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