Fornax LighTrack II setup advice - Forums

Topic starter

1 day ago

Hello all,

I bought a Fornax LighTrack II used for about 370€. It's just the tracking arm so that gave me room to improvise how I would like to have my rig set up and I've come to this final configuration. However, I am very open to any suggestions.

To me, this little Fornax mount is just a window into DSO photography. It just really seems wasted to me to not take advantage of the ridiculously low PE and great performance if I wasn't going to push it a bit (300-400mm). I am not going to mount fully-fledged telescopes on the thing but I am looking forward to taking advantage of focal lengths that are just a tiny bit longer and the prospect of throwing away little to no subs excites me. I always shoot away from home and the prospect of not adding guiding is a godsend, as I like to keep things as simple and as barebones as possible.

My setup would include mounting a Canon 6D (or Nikon Z6) with a Canon EF 300mm f/4 L lens (non-IS). Total weight around 2kg.

Tripod: I already own the aluminum Star Adventurer tripod which is pretty sturdy for the price. For my setup I see no need for an upgrade.
Wedge/latitude base: I have a Star Adventurer base. It's nice but not as good as the William Optics one and I don't really like the design of the official wedge even though it is designed for it.

I'm thinking it's enough for what I have in mind but maybe I'll upgrade to WO down the line. Do you think that a longer vixen dovetail bar will serve me better as long as I'm using the SWSA base?

Mounting head: I bought this gimbal (wimberley) head, I think it's sturdy enough and pretty self balancing for the setup (heavy though!! --> 1.7kg)
- Another option: Vixen Clamp and Star Adventurer counterweight kit with dovetail bar like this. It should work pretty much as well as the official super-expensive counterweight kit. I have the clamp, I can just buy a 3/8” female to 1/4” male panorama head to attach it.
- However, I see no need with 3.7kg of setup to add a counterweight if I'm balanced well enough. From this video, I think I'm confident enough to say it.
Polar scope: also a consideration due to the fact the original one is also not cheap. I'm fine with the original aligning method and not the one with Kochab star. I was thinking of this scope (SkyWatcher HEQ5) with the DeepSkyDad adapter. I messaged him and he said it's probably the right scope (19mm smaller diameter). I have yet to confirm this as from what I understand the EQ5 scope is different from the HEQ5/EQ3 but in his video he states the adapter is for the HEQ5 PRO. I'm pretty confident but we'll see when it arrives.
- another note: COLLIMATION.

I saw the excellent video from Fervent Astronomy on how to collimate it on the mount's axis. However, I don't understand if I first have to collimate it on its own axis (polar scope's axis). It seems counterintuitive to me but I don't have experience so I'm asking.

Power: I bought this power pack on Amazon. It should be fine with the 12V output 55-21 cable and it should provide a very constant power output. It even has a car plug.

For any other consideration, I am open to any suggestion and I'd love to see pictures of your setup. I am pretty excited about this tracker.

I was pretty tired of the Star Adventurer's inconsistency with PE and I didn't want to add guiding.

Thanks in advance for your help and replies.

Clear skies,

Simone

andrea tasselli

Frequent contributor

1 day ago

Quite long and for the general audience I'll stick to English.

* Tripod: I have both a heavy Manfrotto phototripod and a carbon one (Redged). While the former would be the best solution as it is heavy and thus stable you can make do even with the lighter tripod if you are really careful while operating the mount. Really careful.

*Wedge: I have the official wedge and I find it lacking of finesse in the altitude adjustment which is friction-based which means tension needs to be adjusted enough to move the polar axis -down- all the times. A real PITA. Too bad as otherwise is light and easy to adjust in azimuth. I'll probably mod it to add push-pull thumb screws.

* Mounting Head: Not THAT gimbal! Poor choice. For lighter set-ups a good spherical head is good enough but anything of the sort you are considering really needs a counterweight bar and a set of L brackets to set up properly. Or the declination bracket for the SA, as you rightly indicated, that's a good one and the one I'll be buying to upgrade my set-up when time comes. But I'll be using it in conjunction with the counterweight bar for sure. With 300mm of FL I'm pretty confident you need to balance the whole lot, more importantly because you need to point it to the target and that requires a certain amount of fumbling in the dark.

"Polar Scope: I think I have a SW one but mine came with a knurled ring so that I could attach it to the polar arm. No issue with that. Only catch is that you need to use at dusk or you can't see the inner markings. I also made myself a bracket so that I could attach a standard 30mm guidescope and use that to PA the mount with SharpCap PA routine.

*Collimation???? If you mean Polar Alignment then that's the job of the polar scope at minimum. That's all. Otherwise I don't get the question.

*Power: I have a standard Pb-gel sealed battery with 7Ah capacity and a Li-Ion 5Ah which is quite smaller and nimbler than the Lead-acid battery. Both work fine but the Lead-acid is more reliable in the cold.

The main consideration when operating this tracker is stability and be very good at locating objects in the sky by sight alone, to which point I suggest you acquire either a small finderscope of good quality to mount on top of the camera or in parallel to it, more so if you are going to use a 300mm focal length lens. I have used it successfully with a 500mm zoom lens but it is hard work.

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Simone Scarpa

Topic starter

1 day ago

andrea tasselli · Jan 10, 2026, 05:15 PM
* Mounting Head: Not THAT gimbal! Poor choice. For lighter set-ups a good spherical head is good enough but anything of the sort you are considering really needs a counterweight bar and a set of L brackets to set up properly. Or the declination bracket for the SA, as you rightly indicated, that's a good one and the one I'll be buying to upgrade my set-up when time comes. But I'll be using it in conjunction with the counterweight bar for sure. With 300mm of FL I'm pretty confident you need to balance the whole lot, more importantly because you need to point it to the target and that requires a certain amount of fumbling in the dark.

"Polar Scope: I think I have a SW one but mine came with a knurled ring so that I could attach it to the polar arm. No issue with that. Only catch is that you need to use at dusk or you can't see the inner markings. I also made myself a bracket so that I could attach a standard 30mm guidescope and use that to PA the mount with SharpCap PA routine.

*Collimation???? If you mean Polar Alignment then that's the job of the polar scope at minimum. That's all. Otherwise I don't get the question.

The main consideration when operating this tracker is stability and be very good at locating objects in the sky by sight alone, to which point I suggest you acquire either a small finderscope of good quality to mount on top of the camera or in parallel to it, more so if you are going to use a 300mm focal length lens. I have used it successfully with a 500mm zoom lens but it is hard work.

Thanks for the tips. I actually have been using only a laser pointer attached to the lens with an elastic band and I’ve never struggled to find targets at this FL.

I’ll see how the SA wedge performs.

For the collimation part, I am referring to this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9II-wq59EQY&t=124s

As per the head, interesting take. I thought the gimbal would be a better choice than a ballhead or geared head given its self balancing and the center of gravity goes right through the RA axis, without the counterweight. It’s actually less straining on the mount than a ballhead when in difficult orientations. Roger Clark also has said to me that he used a gimbal and linked me to examples on his site, while still acknowledging that it’s more difficult to frame targets and poor quality ones don’t lock perfectly. I am aware. I am also going to get the counterweight kit anyway (my “custom” SW one) because it’s so cheap, however I might try between the gimbal and a geared head and see what I like most for a “lighter” counterweight-free setup. I still have the 135mm lens…

Thanks for your help,

Simone

andrea tasselli

Frequent contributor

1 day ago · Edited: 1 day ago

Simone Scarpa:
For the collimation part, I am referring to this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9II-wq59EQY&t=124s

*Got it. Collimation of the polar scope is done in the usual way, flipping it by 180 degrees with the head down enough to clear a far away target (terrestrial, such as a spire) and ensuring it stays centred in the crosshair on both sides of the flip.

dummieastro

19 hours ago

Hi Simone, I used the Litetrack ii for about a year. I used the Williams Optics Wedge and found it excellent. Money well spent, very solid. I highly recommend trying to find a used counterweight arm and counterweight. Much sturdier than any ball head or gimbal which I tried and did not like except for very short focal length. I used my ASIAIR Mini and a tablet for polar alignment. I also found objects by star hopping to get close and then used the annotation option in the ASIAIR to fine tune the framing. Takes a bit of time on tougher objects, easy on the more popular targets. Hope you have fun with it. It is a great little tracker. Below is an early example.

📷 IC2118

https://app.astrobin.com/i/aor9pg/

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Simone Scarpa

Topic starter

17 hours ago

Thanks for your suggestion and beautiful image! I was also gravitating on the ASI AIR if my plans to use the SW polar scope aren't effective enough.

It looks to me like the All-Sky Polar Alignment feature is the easier one of the bunch and I can easily slew the mount with the buttons to plate solve in the two-different positions required for the PA process through the main camera.

I saw sharpcap and NINA but given they need to run on a PC it's an instant no-no for me. And a polemaster frankly is as expensive as the ASI AIR so I might as well have it for future proofing already.

One other DYI thing I need to do is find a way to roughly polar align using the laser. I know someone who drilled a threaded hole for the MSM laser into the swing-arm, but I lack any precision tool to make this happen. I was thinking of cutting a cylindrical hole in a piece of foam (like for packaging and stuff) I can fit into the 27.4mm hole of the arm. Once I'm done I remove it from the hole and mount the scope.

CS,

Simone