For the tracking mount, that we use to take star photos from, to accurately follow the motion of the stars it needs to be pointing in the direction of the South Celestial Pole (SCP) the region in the sky directly above the south pole, sadly even form a dark sky region like Tekapo you can't see anything in that part of the sky because the stars are to faint, so how do we find it? Most german eqitorial mounts are equipped with a polar finder luckily for us that gathers more light than you would normally see with your own eye - here is what I would be looking for
Thank you Mr Masui for this picture
As you can see from the picture its only showing 2 degrees from the SCP so the initial placment of the mount is crucial, the more accurate this alignment is the longer you will be able to expose your star photo for without getting star trails, even if you were using an auto guider. Even 1 degree off (out of the inner circle) and your exposure time would have to be less than 2 minutes for a good photo, for this reason spend time to get this correct as our target exposure times start from 4 minutes (using just a normal lens f/4 ISO 1600)
Actual photo of the SCP taken with a 85mm camera lens from Tekapo, cropped to get a similar angle and feild of view
Once the alignment is correct anything based on top of the tracking will track the motion of the stars - we have made our mount with a beam and 5 ball joints on top so we can place up to 5 cameras at the same time, regradless of the direction you choose to point your camera in the night sky it will track the motion of the stars for you. So now the hardest thing for you to do is get the focus correct.
Aniamtion of the SCP, sorry you may need to wait for download (1.12mb) mp4 file format.
Download Apple Quicktime
The South Celestial Pole, can you find it? This animation was made using timelapse photography over a 3 hour period, using a total of 286, 30 second, individual photos. Taken with a canon 7d and a 85mm lens on a solid tripod.
