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Build a Barn Door Tracker
Manually Operated Version
For convenience and stability, I designed the mount to sit on the trunk of my car. A tripod made of 2 x 4 lumber supported the mount. To make polar alignment as easy as possible, I calculated the lengths of the tripod legs so that the camera platform was tilted at an angle of a little less than 43°, which was the latitude of my (then) home in New Hampshire. Adjustable feet allowed for fine tuning when aligning the mount with Polaris. I adjusted the tripod until I could see Polaris through a Burger King soda straw glued to the mount, parallel to the hinges. This has proved accurate enough for exposures in the 1 to 4 minute range. Tracking was accomplished by continuously turning a long ¼-inch screw at a rate of one revolution per minute while the exposure was in progress.
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