Equatorial Wedge Upgrade

On the astrophotography front I am happy to report about my recent wedge upgrade. A wedge is an important part of a tracking camera mount, a kind of mount which compensates for the rotation of Earth and allows long(er) exposures. 

Precision of a tracking head directly impacts the quality of long exposure photos of the (night) sky. Equally important is the stability of a tripod as well as sturdiness of a wedge, which must be calibrated for each session.

Some of you may remember I have been using the Fornax Lightrack II tracking head which offers a great balance between precision and portability. Initially I had tried several 3rd party wedges with the Lightrack, but all of them were shaky and flimsy, so in the end I decided on getting the original wedge from Fornax. It did the job, being very sturdy, but with that came the weight and the size. Also the Fornax wedge was difficult to align precisely, as the mechanism lacked a method for (very) fine adjustments. 

Quite recently William Optics - a telescope company - started offering a very promising wedge, which I decided to try as an upgrade. It has several advantages over the original Fornax wedge - is smaller, lighter, and has screw-based adjustment method which is MUCH more precise than the one offered by Fornax.

Unfortunately the WO wedge did not have a way to attach it directly to the Fornax tracker. But a local metal milling service shop offered me some help in making an aluminum plate to attach the trucker directly to the wedge. It looks great and works great, so definitely an upgrade worth recommending. Perhaps at some point WO will offer the Fornax plate adapter as an accessory, as it is very simple: an aluminum plate with holes for 4 screws.