Astronomy tests Vixen's compact astroimaging mount

The Polarie Star Tracker makes it easy to take long-exposure wide-field images.

By Tom Trusock

Published: June 26, 2012

Vixen Optics’ Polarie Star Tracker is a compact mount ideal for wide-field astroimaging with a digital camera.

Photo by Astronomy: William Zuback

A mount is the most crucial (and expensive) piece of hardware for an astroimager. When you’re picking one, you have to choose between stability (which, for the uninitiated, means large, heavy, and expensive) and portability. You can make things a little easier by choosing to go with a less demanding (but equally stunning) form of celestial photography — wide-field — but the mounts can still be rather bulky.

It was to meet this market that Vixen Optics introduced the Polarie Star Tracker — an ultraportable tracking mount designed for wide-field photography and recommended for lenses with focal lengths up to 100 millimeters.

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