What is the best way of supporting my Digicam for astro imaging?
There are three ways you can make use of it: You can use a fixed tripod to record nice images of the constellations, and also events like Aurora displays and sunsets. At night you can set the exposure to it’s maximum length as star trailing will probably not be a problem unless it’s longer than about 30 seconds. Secondly, it is possible to ‘Piggy-back’ your digicam on a tracking platform or driven equatorial telescope mount. However, most digicams do not offer a sufficiently long exposure to make piggy-back mounting worthwhile. A few do though those digicams offering a minute exposure or longer would benefit from being able to track the movement of the stars. Thirdly, most amateur astronomers want to photograph what they can see through a telescope, hopefully in greater detail and in colour. While an acceptable image can sometimes be obtained holding the camera to the eyepiece, best results are obtained with the camera firmly attached to the telescope. Two methods are in common use: a
