Camera Box

The Camera Enclosure is carried by an Equatorial Mount. This protective box holds the DSLR cameras used to image the night sky, and their supporting electronics dry, though only when in the parked position. There are two great big holes in the side for the lenses, so parking the mount rotates the enclosure so that those holes are on the bottom, facing down at the ground.

The cameras are entry-level Canon DSLRs with Rokinon 85mm f/1.4 lenses. This provides a large field of view: 15 degrees x 10 degrees; as a result, a typical image of the night sky will contain 10s of thousands of stars. Note that the use of two cameras is not related to binocular vision. It provides us with more images to process, but at a lower cost than one camera with a larger lens with twice the light gathering of the two smaller lenses.

Camera Box Parts List

The parts below are incomplete and only meant to give an idea of the parts involved in building a PANOPTES unit. For a complete and detailed list with website links to recommended parts for online orders, check the following link.

Electronics

Electronic Parts

Labeled

Hardware

Hardware Parts

Labeled