The Haig mount was designed by a gentleman named George Haig and the original design was published in Sky and Telescope back in 1975.. It broadly consists of a hinged flap (or 'barn door') that opens at Sidereal rate (15 degrees per hour). A Camera on a ball mount is mounted on the opening door and this can then be used for imaging large scale items such as constellations. This Wikepedia article explains the principle.
I built my Haig mount about 17 or 18 years ago, I don't use it very often, I don't know why not as it keeps me occupied while my other telescopes are doing more serious work.
We had what appeared to be a clear night on 2025-13-18, in reality, it was actually pretty awful with high level cloud limiting naked eye magnitude to about Mag 2.5 or 3. Polaris was just visible and M45 was an averted vision fuzzy patch.
So while my 200mm F5 newton telescope was trying and failing to capture the nubulosity surrounding M45, I thought I would have play with my Haig mount.
I used my Sony A58 DSLR - not the best choice as the 'live view' viewfinder is very limiting on framing the image in the dark. and selected 3 targets
- Orion and M42 as it was setting in the west
- Cancer with M44 - I love M44 - my favourite open cluster
- Leo - hoping to capture some of the galaxies (M65/M66).
Orion & M42
This made quite a good movie as the hedge slowly rose up. The mount tracked the constellation really well. Quite a few frames had to be discarded due to aircraft trails and some brighter satellite trails.
Cancer & M44
Quite a nice shot although there is some evidence of flaring on some of the brighter stars. I think I need to check that the lens is clean - it hasn't been used for years.
Leo
I didn't capture either M65 or M66 - it took me a while to navigate around the image. It didn't help that Denebola had been cropped off the left hand side. I have marked out the Greek letter star notations. Still quite a pleasing shot considering the conditions.