Re: [ATM] Tracking Systems for Astrophotography

["Bob May" <bobmay@nethere.com>]

One thing to remember is that when you do closed loop tracking, the finesse
part of celestial mechanics becomes irrelevant.
Don Clement is apparently trying to do an analog tracking system with the 4
quadrant detector scheme but this is going to need a lot of light
multiplication in order to work right.  The problem there is the relatively
low sensitivity of the photodiodes to the light.  CCD devices which can be
read out will produce a much better and quicker result although you do need
to do readout of the device and calculation of the location of the image of
the star.  Another problem in this regard is finding a CCD device of small
size that allows for the quick readout of the image on the device.  The
trend in CCDs these days is more towards multi-megapixel devices and the
small 100x100 devices are, for the most part, gone by the wayside as
obselete devices.  FWIW, the QCUIAG autotracker program that I worked on for
a while is a prototype program for anybody that is interested in doing
autoguiding with a CCD camera.  The program was written in QuickBasic but
should really be written in assembly language for the fastest response as
well as for a dedicated processor rather than the PC platform.
I'll also note that picking off a star from the large scope will do a much
better job of being able to track than using a smaller scope to do the
actual tracking as there will be a lot more light which will improve
tracking times.
Bob May
http://nav.to/bobmay
bobmay@nethere.com
NEW! http://bobmay.astronomy.net


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