AstroTrac TT320X-AG mount
Are you a dedicated astrophotographer? Then imagine the following "horror scenario":
You have arrived at your holiday destination, the sky is clearing at dusk and the Milky Way is directly above you. And you had to leave your travel mount at home because it was too heavy.
This horror scenario no longer has to be a reality, because now there is the AstroTrac mount – the lightweight and space-saving travel mount.
The AstroTrac is not necessarily a travel mount in the traditional sense. It could also be described as a tangential arm mount with a segment drive.
The advantages of the AstroTrac at a glance:
The AstroTrac is a completely new type of travel mount with very precise tracking for 2 hours, universally applicable for astrophotography and visual observation with short-focus refractors.
With a weight of only 1.1 kilograms and a size of only 425x95x43 mm when folded, it is extremely portable and can be used worldwide. AstroTrac means simple and quick setup. Place it on a photo tripod, centre the North Star in the polar finder scope, align the camera or telescope and press the "Track" button – done.
High-quality workmanship thanks to high-tech materials. The drive spindle and motor are specially manufactured for the AstroTrac and guarantee a drive accuracy of only a few arc seconds.
The AstroTrac in detail:
In principle, the AstroTrac consists of two arms, one of which is fixed and the second is moved against the fixed arm via a spindle. The camera, telescope, etc. is attached to the upper part of the movable arm.
The movement to drive the spindle and thus compensate for the Earth's rotation is provided by a small, low-power stepper motor that drives the drive spindle directly. This avoids additional errors from intermediate reduction gears.
The motor and drive spindle are manufactured together to guarantee minimal periodic drive error as a unit. The step size of the drive spindle is 0.3 arc seconds.
The periodic worm error is a few arc seconds over a period of several minutes – ideal for short exposure times with digital or analogue SLR cameras.
The drive spindle is enclosed in a special, very hard polycarbonate (much less brittle than acrylic glass) and the resolution is comparable to that of a conventional worm gear with a diameter of 60 cm! The interior of the acrylic glass is illuminated by red light-emitting diodes during operation, so that it is always visible in the dark how long the AstroTrac can still run before the spindle end is reached. High-precision tapered roller bearings are used as axle bearings.
Most of the individual parts of the AstroTrac are manufactured from a special aircraft-grade aluminium on high-precision CNC machines. This material is extremely torsion-resistant, low-vibration, hard and very light. All connecting screws are made of stainless V2A steel.
The AstroTrac is attached to the tilt head of a normal photo tripod via a 3/8" photo thread. During operation, this head is aligned with the celestial pole in both elevation and azimuth. The camera connection is a standard 1/4" photo thread. The more stable the tripod and tilt head, the higher the instrument load can be - up to a maximum of 15 kg!
Thanks to its ingenious design, the AstroTrac can be used equally well in both the northern and southern hemispheres.
Depending on whether it is used north or south of the equator, the AstroTrac is unfolded from its basic position and rotated by 180 degrees – counterclockwise for the northern hemisphere and clockwise for use south of the equator. There are no switches to flip or motor directions to change.
AstroTrac is prepared for mounting a polar finder scope. However, this is not included in the scope of delivery.
As an innovation, every AstroTrac is now supplied with a magnetic holder for the pole finder. The AstroTrac pole finder can be mounted in seconds and is held exactly parallel to the axis by three strong neodymium magnets - without clamping screws. In addition, the magnetic holder allows it to be rotated as required.
The AstroTrac mount is controlled entirely via four built-in buttons in the lower part of the movable arm. Both the buttons and the transparent part of the arm can be indirectly illuminated by coloured LEDs.
The buttons control the start and stop functions of the AstroTrac. In addition, you can adjust the brightness of the LEDs and the volume of the acoustic signals in 5 steps. The AstroTrac is powered by 12 volts DC. The input is a standard jack socket to which any small power supply can be connected. The entire drive is designed to be very energy-efficient (approx. 250 mA at 12 volts).
The new version of the TT320X-AG from AstroTrac is distinguished from the previous TT320 model by the following technical innovations and improvements:
- additional tracking speeds for the Sun and Moon, rather than just for stars. The tracking speed can now also be set to Solar or Lunar tracking by simply pressing a key when switching on. This opens up two completely new areas of application, i.e. for visual and photographic observing with short focal length refractors (e.g. for earthshine, narrow crescent moon, sun spots).
- autoguider port! - allowing you to control your AstroTrac mount via autoguider. Accurate tracking of objects is made easy even at long focal lengths and long exposures. The ST-4 compatible port works with most of the common autoguiders such as the Mammut Lyuba CCD camera (21883) or the Orion StarShoot autoguider (14248).
- a completely redesigned drive system with improved tracking accuracy (even without autoguiding) AstroTrac now guarantees an accuracy of 5 arcseconds (peak to peak) over a period of 5 minutes. This also allows the photographic use of longer focal lengths for deep sky photography.
- ultra-portable: The AstroTrac weighs only 1kg! No heavier than a carton of milk, but similarly easy to transport. The skeleton construction means significant weight saving as compared to previous versions.
- a significant increase in the instrument payload. The carrying capacity of the TT320 was10kg, the new TT320X-AG can now carry a full 15kg (maximum, short design) instrument payload.
- extended polar finder arm for significantly easier polar alignment.
