Scorpio
The Constellation
This is a scan of a 35 mm print taken with a Pentax K-Mount f/3.8 telephoto lens at 28
mm. The film used was Kodak ASA400 and the exposure was around five minutes. I
was amazed when I got these pictures back from the developer. Saying I
was pleased is an understatement.
I did it by removing the telescope from the mount and replacing it with a wooden board
to hold two cameras. These were a Pentax 35mm film camera to take the shot and a
Mintron video camera to put a live feed on the TV so I could change the tracking speed and
follow a guide star. A felt pen was used to put a small box on the TV screen
surrounding a bright star, then the speed of the mount's tracking motor was adjusted with
the hand-controller.
A very rough polar alignment (a few iterations of the Drift Method) was done prior to
the start of the exposure.
Very pleasing.
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