Star Tracker Tutorial - Deep Space Astrophotography 

The best explanation ever heard about DSO photography!

Excellent explanations- best tutorial I've seen!

Excellent telescope astrophotography for 2019! Filters too!

Peter another great video, really in depth coverage from the user for the user, I faced many of these problems as well! What a pleasure to watch the video - again! Keep on your great work! Best regards from Germany!

Your tutorial videos are the gems. The Best explanation so far.

This is very helpful. Thank you

Hi Peter, last night I correctly focused my Rokinon 14mm 2.8 for the first time, thanks to your tip of focusing on not the brightest star, but one of the smaller - less bright stars near it. I’m so excited to explore more of your channel and thank you for your excellent content.

My star tracker has just been on my shelf gathering dust along with my GoPro before this video, so helpful

Very thorough and clearly explained!

Good video. I was thinking about picking up one of these trackers. Thank you! Subscribed! 👍

Excellent video Peter. Thank you.

Could not have explained the process better - thank you very much :)

Thanks so much for the relatively concise, clear, and no nonsense intro. This is exactly the video I wanted to find. Cheers!

0:56 for the star adventurer, there is a hole in the right side of the tracker for visually aligning with Polaris

This is great. Thank you. Terrific!!

Excellent video and very useful. Thank you!

Very helpful video, Peter! It would also be good to mention that you DO NOT want to have the center column of the tripod extended when actually shooting because it allows too much shake and can cause star streaks in the photo. Best to keep the center column all the way down or use a tripod like your Feisol CT-3442, which has no center column,. Clear skies!

Hello Peter, Glad to see this tutorial.. I am also going over your detailed tutorials.. It was a pleasure meeting you in Florida and the sessions we had.. To all who are just researching and trying to find your way into Astrophotography, I can personally vouch for Peter's knowledge and patience in all aspects of AP. From helping set up Star Guider Pro, to going over my lenses, and telescope and going over dark skies and helping me align the SGP to Polaris over and again in the Everglades ..The post processing sessions we had again and again helped me to gain confidence to work on the images we obtained.. Hope this helps for anyone that require help to start into AP..

I have downloaded your two sets of lessons (Deep Space and Star Adventurer). They look to be outstanding. An excellent value for the money.

great video --- helped me a lot. thank you

Great presentation, thank you

Brilliant!

I recently ordered the Sony 200-600 lens for my A7RIII and am really anxious to try it out. You have made me see just how powerful these new camera lens are. I have already made a few nice photos with the Star Tracker and the 70-300mm Sony lens. I have got some sharp stars at 30S, ISO 2500 around M42. I am impressed with the tracker. I had my Star Tracker mounted on a nice wooden tripod from 1959 but today moved it over to a second Meade telescope tripod. I think a bit more stable. I found a place 21 miles from my house in the desert on the road to WSMR that I traveled for 20 years that I now set up at. Kind of spooked me to get way off the road into the BLM property as who knows what could happen. At the place I picked on the road (it is known as WAR road) I get about two cars passing per hour. Enough to make me feel OK but not so much as to interfere with shooting. BTW - you and I commented on the graticule being lit or not-lit in the polar alignment scope and the obvious solution is to use the mount the way it comes from the factory. I see nothing wrong with turning it over if that is what it takes to balance the scope and counterweight but turning it over does turn off the light in the alignment scope.

Very detailed and informative.

GREAT channel! Thank you!

Good video 👍🏻may pick up a dove tail now for my Z61 ! What I've been using to locate objects is a £15 celestron star finder pointer fixed to camera hot shoe makes finding objects easier.

Solid helpful information.... Thank you.

Good one! Thank you!

Great video!

Great video Peter 👍🏻 Well done. I'll look into your course too. Now I need to get a tracker.

Great work

Nice video Peter. I put the ISO to maximum when I do my intial framing. That way I only need to take a 5 second shot to see the object. It saves a lot of time as it usually takes quite a few shots to get the framing just right. I then put it back to my normal ISO once done.

great video. thanks for sharing :)

Peter, another excellent introduction to using star trackers. For balancing the camera/lens on the dec arm you might try a nodal slide/rail or macro slide like the Manfrotto 454.

Super video ☺👍:)

Here's a balancing tip when you need to use two of the cylindrical counter weights. Move one to be about 1/2" away from the upper end. Next, bring the rig into pretty good balance by moving the second (outer) weight. Finally, make the finest adjustments using the counter weigh closest to your rotational axis. This give you the most control over the balancing process. Good balancing helps give good results!

Néw subscriber ! Love your video

One of the very few videos on the Star Adventurer/Tracker. I have the Adventurer from Sky Watcher.

Thankyou

Nice, little tip for the star adventurer pro, we can use the free app for the "mini" version to have the polar alignment :)

awesome video thank you very much! May I ask which star tracker you used there or which you would recommend?

One suggestion for proper balancing: Try to balance your setup and counter weight so that the worm gear always has contact to the transmission gear. That means one side will slightly be havier than the other. That helps to avoid the backslash problem in the gear/ra-axis. For the northern hemisphere the east side (camera or counterweight, depends on the direction you are photographing at) has to be slightly heavier than the west side.

If I could add one tip. I wouldn't raise the tripod too high. It is more prone to movement by the wind, fart, or ground. I've been keeping my scope about 3 feet off the ground and I think it helps keep it sturdy when using high focal lengths.

The advantage of a ball head is that it lets you re-frame the object to a more pleasing composition. It allows you to exclude or include certain stars or parts of a nebula that you might want or don't want just by adjusting the ball head. With the camera attached directly to the declination axis, you are confined to what it gives you. I'm totally on board though with not having lens and camera dangling too far from the tracker thereby causing instability. It's a trade-off.

I was actually forced to reverse the declination bracket the way you have because that way the 12 in the scope reticle is at the top as it should be... Also in my manual the images show that this is the correct way to set it up..

Good to see you again Peter. This thing takes me 5 minutes to do a good polar alignment using Polar alignment app. It's great. Been trying to get some time lapse pics in the day with this since the nights have been cloudy or rainy. No good results yet. Have you tried it?

Another Excellent tutorial. Any budget lens you would suggest for astrophotography other than the stock 18-55mm I have on my cropped Canon SL2?

GREAT video about pointing and balancing! Just starting out with that tracker and those hints should help a lot! Does anyone have suggestions on how to do a pano of the Milkyway with a tracker? I find that I get all messed up trying to point the camera at each of the next pano locations. Using a ball head so I can reposition the camera. But I haven’t found a good position to set the declanation arm to to make it easiest to keep repositioning the camera.

Thank you for your awesome video but in none of them where you introduce or review all these star trackers, you mention what TRIPODS should be USED for these mounts, which, once the tracker, balancing weights, ball head, camera and lens are mounted on, come to a pretty hefty weight, like 10 to 20 lbs if not more, so I guess it's not with the average travel carbon fiber that you're going to mount all the stuff on with often limitations of 5 to 10 lbs load on those, so what do you use and what is advisable to use ? The Ioptron 3201, cheap and designed for the Skyguider Pro ? the 3501 little beefier and still cheap ? Something else ? I think we're many beginners having that question for which I don't see many videos talking about it. I see many on trackers, but i didn't see much with a word on tripods to use with them, when it should be the cornerstone of the whole setup for stability. If you can help... Wait, I just found your "My 2020 Astrophotography set up" video, where you mention your Feisol CT-3442. Thank you, it's a start, although you want to replace it, this one has a 55 lbs given load though and you seem to find it little weak. Okay, I'll dig more. I still have to find a good Tripod comparative video for this kind of setup. Now that I just got my Skyguider Pro and Space Cat 51 (Yes, you're guilty, with AstroBackyard channel), that's the one piece I now need to get. Anyway, if you know of any comparatives, or who knows, could do one... Thank again for all your great videos and content.

Star tracker / star guider / adventurer …. Im new . Want to purchase- but I am confused between these … thx - excellent video . I want to do Milky Way and deep space . I have wide angle and long lens

Awesome video! I've been trying to find a tracker for a while now. Amazon doesn't have the sgp available now, which is a shame (I have a gc balance I'm trying to use). I want to bring it for an upcoming trip to hawaii, but now I'm debating just going with the stp or the sky tracker... I'm so torn

Great tutorial. I live in Chile, in a town near the Atacama desert. I have perfect dark skies for astrophotography, but polar align in the southern hemisphere is pretty difficult since we don't have a star like polaris. Any advice? Great content in this channel. Keep it up!

does the 12 really need to be at the top, or is it just having the axes vertical and horizontal? I mean for example if the 3 is at the top instead of the 12.does it matter for northern alignment.

at 11.45 you rotate the polar scope. You can see that the target reticle is not in the center of scope and it kind of revolves around the scope. My scope is doing exactly the same. If i align my scope to far away target and then rotate the target remains exactly on the center of the crosshair but the crosshair revolves around just like in your video. Is this expected behaviour? Excellent tutorial videos!

Don't know if you'll see this Peter but I have a question. Why do you not recommend using a ball head? You never really go into detail. I've had a look at the tripod collars but for me they're like an extra 100+ on top. After getting the trackers and all I haven't the money spare. I was hoping to use my ball head. Cheers.

Great detail information. I am very new to astrophotography and looking forward to buy a ioptron tracker. Which would you recommend, ioptron sky guider pro or sky tracker pro? Please suggest.

Can you do a tutorial on how to locate objects with a DSLR? I have trouble finding nebulae and galaxies even with a telescope and don't see how you are doing this.

Tried to download the advanced firmware. No install file, only .mcf that Windows can't open! Contact form on Skywatcher crashes without sending my message!

Could be a stupid question, I have been using the Star adventure pro and aligning it withe the 0 on top and the 6 down below and then locking the axis and doing my polar alignement. If i unlock the axis after I align it, does that mess it up? I ask because I was using the ball head with a longer lense and thought i had to use it other wise I would mess up the alingment if i unlocked the axis. thanks !

Hi Peter. I think you wouldn't need a ball head if you are photographing just the night sky. However, if you are shooting, for example, a portrait-orientated photo of the Grand Canyon in the foreground, with the Milky Way in the background (so 1/3rd ground, 2/3rds sky), a Ball head might be necessary in order to have a level horizon. Thoughts?

When you live close to the equator and cannot see polaris. What is your advice about a precise polar alignment for a star tracker?

hi Peter, Congrats, lots of great videos with a simple language. I've a question: if I'll use a sky tracker for a deep space photo, should I take as many as photos I can? why? for stacking? or can I take 1 picture with 2 or 3 min?

thanks peter for all the great information. i have little query regarding stacking. can we achieve same results from stacking images and aligning them? oe we need star tracker for longer exposures

Cool tutorial. Do you use a modified camera?

OK, so I used Stellarium to find Polaris and I see the actual North Celestial Pole is located at 6:20h with respect to Polaris itself. Do I put Polaris in my scope on the cross hairs or do I eye ball where the cross hairs are supposed to go in my scope?

Great video. I'm new with star tracker. There's Something I Don't understand. You use star tracker to be able to do super long exposure time , without star trail. But why you say we gonna have star trail on wide angle lens after 5 min., and on telephoto lens after 1 min. ? I was thinking that with that tool, you could do exposure time about 30 minutes, or 1 hour, easily, without star trail ?

What time of night do you usually shoot? Just before and after sunset, or after midnight, and why? When I shoot urban landscapes I usually shoot before and just after sunset (civil twilight) because I like to capture city lights and buildings at the same time. I'm going to be heading to Banff for a ski trip this year and I'm trying to decide if I want to buy a star tracker and more importantly if I'm willing to be out in the dark doing photography.

Once you have polar alignment, is it safe to rotate the clutch/camera to back to a good position to compose? I might be second-guessing myself, but every time I'm aligned, and I swing the camera back to where I want it, the reticle is off.

Hey, you mention that you turn around your declination mount to get more counterweight leverage, right? But then you run into clearance issues. Why not just buy/make a longer rod so you can mount the counterweight further away without the clearance issues?

Hi Peter, something I still don't understand, The star tracker is just used for long length lenses? I mean , if I use a wide lens I don't need it right? tsk

Recommendations for what lenses are good for this sort of thing?

Peter, great review/ tutorial. One question, how do you use this in solar tracking, is there some sort of alignment you have to do before selecting solar on the dial. Obviously there is no Polaris visible during the day so what do I align with to solar track?

A great, easy to follow video Peter. A question if I may...i have recently purchased the Skywatcher Star Adventurer Pro. When I look through the reticle, the reticle itself is in focus but the stars appear out of focus. Is this normal and how can I fix this?

I’m super new to astrophotography and I was wonder does the star tracker make it so you don’t have to stack images, or is it used to get longer exposure images so you don’t have to stack so many at once.

Which tripod do you use in real outings? Can you set up a link?

He keeps talking about the SkyGuider Pro, but the video is labelled SkyTracker Pro (??)

9:20 - Could you put a quick release arca swiss clamp onto the declination mount between the tripod foot of the lens and the tracker? Then use a long lens plate on the tripod foot (120mm for instance); this would allow you to slide the lens and camera fore/aft like the telescope example. Most people will already have a long lens plate on their telephoto lenses for other uses (ie: gimbal head/wildlife). It would make transitioning better as well so there's no need to remove the arca swiss plate and attach the declination bracket. And vice versa. The quick release and the lens plate would be under $40 together and would allow a much more convenient transfer between mounting solutions with the same telephoto lens. Just a thought! I've recently been intrigued by astrophotography... I did my first stack last night in Sequator - 37 images at 6sec each aimed at Andromeda with a 85mm F1.8. I'm hooked! I immediately see the need for a tracker; so time to start saving $$$ - I'm torn between the Star Adventurer and the SkyGuider Pro... You had mentioned telephoto work is slightly better with the Star Adventurer though so perhaps I'm leaning more towards that direction. Great videos by the way! Keep up the great content!

I can't figure out why you keep extending the center column that high. Doesn't that make your life much more difficult?

Hi Peter, can the star tracker be used in light polluted skies to increase night sky detail and colours? If the sky is Bortle 4, will it work well? What Bortle skies to you work under? Thanks

Is it the Tamron SP f/5 6.3 lense you use?

What lens did you use to make that video?

Hey peter was wondering if you or anyone here could help. I have a sky guider pro and my clutch is stuck..every time I rotate the plate the clutch moves with it, any idea on how to fix it?

why spend 300-$500 for a star tracker that can only handle a camera or small scope, when you can get a real tracker like the AVX for $400-$500 used or $800 new?.

Tracy Lee just got a 12 minute expo off an ECH-630 tripod at 35mm. If you like these kinds of shots check her out on Instagram: Tracyleephotos. It’s insane.

you got a dip in bro?