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Here's one of my shitty attempts. It doesn't look much better than a phone shot but I put a bit more effort in it.
Poorfag here.
With a friend I bought an old manual equatorial mount and added a huge gearbox plus an electric stepper motor with a custom driver board. Also we installed a cheap polar scope in parallel with the axis of rotation for correct alignment.
I guess the polar alignment was not perfect but I had more serious problems: it turned out my Nikon 7000 doesn't allow longer exposures than 30s without a remote which I didn't have at that time. So I used my lens wide open but I had focusing problems as you can see.
I still think that the machine we built works well and if I manage to overcome my camera problems I will be able to do some nice shots. I have a remote now so I expect a lot of improvement. I will also try a zoom lens and some post processing (stacking, etc).
Any other ideas on how to improve?
Anyone else into diy?