7/3/2017 Rainy Day Project

I’ve been thinking of a way to mount one or two cameras to my Nexstar SLT mount so they can track the sky. Hopefully here it is. I’ll remove the straps when the time comes to reduce weight. The plan is to have the larger camera (EOS T5)  zoomed to 300mm for the eclipse which should be enough to capture all of the corona. The other, an SX50 HS, can zoom much farther to close in on the disk. A third camera will be set up stationary separately and wide angle to capture the entire 3 hour event with the Sun moving across the field of view. There is a third 1/4-20 post near the centerline for when I’m using one camera.

Visible in the second picture is a mini-ball mount to give me greater control over the direction and tilt of the cameras.  I’m already thinking about drilling holes in the disk closer to the edge to give me room to tilt. Determining the relative direction of the Sun’s axis on game day would let me orient the cameras to match.

I’m hoping for clear skies soon to test the rig.

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