Need help finding celestial tripod head for photography

[Steve Foss]

Hey all:

Pretty specific question here.

I've been searching online for a tripod head (battery or electric operated, I'd assume) that will track with the earth's rotation so that I can take long exposures of the heavens from a solid tripod without motion blur. I'm just not having any luck finding one. Without providing direct links or contact info (the name of the company will do fine), can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks!

[finnbay]

Just looking at my Celestron NexStar 80G which has the motorized tripod head. It has a collar instead of a screw attachment. It holds the outer barrel on my 100-400 perfectly, but would have to experiment to see what other lenses might work.

[JollyT]

Steve, what exactly are you trying to do? whole sky photos or actual astronomical photography? For the first you'll want an equatorial mount and a normal to wide lens. In the second case, you probably need to spring for a real scope and a mount for a Cannon body or a dedicated CCD head. There are guys who have imaged Pluto from their backyards! Granted they had about $10k invested in their scope and chilled chip camera, but this was the realm of large university telescopes even back in the '70s.

Anyway, try that Ado rama place in NYC or there is a place in OK like Astronomy, but has ics on the end. I bought some eye pieces and parts from them back in the late '80s when I lived up north and had dark skies. I've still got a big old 8" newtonian with an electric equatorial mount that needs some TLC, that I should sell one of these days. Be warned, this is a whole new addiction.

[Steve Foss]

Thanks guys!

Jolly, I'm interested in the wider angle stuff to start, but we'll see how it goes. I know about photographic addiction. I was a sky watcher for many years when I was younger, and ever since I got into photography I've had this itch in the back of my mind that I'm finally ready to scratch.

Ken, I'll look into Celestron to see if they sell mounts separately. If the collar goes around a 100-400 just right, I'm sure I could make it work on other lenses too.

With the right type of drive/mount, It'd be easy to get wider angle photos with the 17-40 and 1D3 at exposures of only a few minutes that would show the nebulosity in the Milky Way, for example. It would also allow aurora borealis long exposures without getting star tracks. And heck, once I get things dialed in, it'd be way cool to grab the 800mm from Canon Professional Services and do some tighter work if the mount can handle the weight. Even my 400 f5.6 could take care of some of what I'd like to do.

[cryhavoc]

That sounds like a really neat idea, Steve. The only way I had ever heard doing that was buying the telescope with a camera adapter. Many years ago, my first “telephoto lense” was a Celestron 6”X30” Newtonian. Between the manual focus, the vignetting , the mirror halos and changing tubes for focus lengths. The experiment did not last long, but I did enjoy the crazy looks I got tooling around with that thing.