diy equatorial telescope mount

Naturally as a kid I had to have one, so I told my father and he said let’s build it! To make life easier for the computerised GOTO, it is important to get the DEC axis orthogonal with the RA axis. The point of the 'V' holds a piece of pipe that serves as the mechanical apparatus for the mount. Telescopes with equatorial (EQ) mounts are your go to astrophotography solution. The GM11 is 60lb equipment and the Titan is 100lb. But with the arrival of COVID-19, the stakes are higher than ever. We've been helping billions of people around the world continue to learn, adapt, grow, and thrive for over a decade. Equatorial Mount The problem of altitude azimuth mounts is fixed in equatorial mounts by fixing the azimuth axis to shift towards the NCP automatically. Saved by Christopher Fandrich. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Here follows a few links to pages on my blog where I've discussed the mount. Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered. Today the Dobsonian mounting prevails. The setting circles and focuser came from Jaegers Optical way back when. I got it down to the order of 1 arc second per minute drift in both west and South, and then I got bored. Various bolts can be tightened to lock the polar alignment in place. You mount your camera on the “door,” then aim the hinge straight at the North Star, Polaris. A seemingly never ending number of parts that had to be a close slip fit over the 30mm shaft. Learn more... Astronomy is a very popular hobby. There are no suppliers or hand-washing telescope salesmen to grapple with, just your self and your tool box. Measure the base of your telescope mount. The figure for metal stock is very vague as I have a number of sources! Most telescopes on mounts like that are way more intolerant to vibration than your camera lens and they do just fine. Used ones can be obtained for less, but why buy one when you can build your own and learn something new in the process?This article will walk you through the construction of a simple, fixed-elevation equatorial wedge. Undo six bolts and it comes into two halves. Whether I've got anything better or worse is impossible to answer. The solution seemed to be to take the OTA (Optical Tube Assembly) off the forks and mount it to something like a German Equatorial Mount (GEM). The inverted-fork mount is a design sometimes recommended for a beginner's first telescope with an equatorial mounting. Please consider supporting our work with a contribution to wikiHow. My scope is a big 65 pounder, the Celestron 11" CPC SCT. My mount is going to be put in my observatory and then never moved for years. } catch(err) {}, See here on my other site on how to make telescope worm wheels on a mini-lathe, Main homemade German equatorial GEM telescope mount project Category page, First test of putting the big telescope on the DIY mount. 50-75lb load capacity. If things breakdown, you are the best person to fix them. You can buy fancy motorized “equatorial mounts” for telescopes and cameras, but it’s way cheaper and more satisfying to build your own simple “barn door” tracking mount using a long bolt or threaded rod as a drive screw. Not easy. The shaft steel is 30mm diameter. All the nuts, bolts, studding and washers are A2 or A4 stainless steel. These people tend to buy lots of equipment, complain loudly when it doesn't work and produce mediocre results at best. About a dozen 10mm Oilite bronze bushes, about a quid each. the 120mm OD bearing upon which the whole thing sits. The mount works really well, however, it sits very low for someone tall. A GEM allows the scope to swing around without clearance issues for the most part. E.g. I already had the mill and the lathe, so I've probably not spent much more or less a member of the normal herd buying an normal mount. Imaging with commercial mounts gives lots of fun and pleasure, but you are always measuring yourself against others with similar equipment. Humans have been interested in the things they can see in the sky since before recorded history, and that interest shows no sign of abating. I have never understood commercial mount designs where they put the DEC worm on the "telescope side" of the pivot point - it just means you need more counterweights. Mount slewing video take 2 Drilling and tapping for m12 bolts down the all 4 ends of the hardened shaft steel. Now we’ll show you how to complete and motorise the Dobsonian equatorial platform. This is always going to mean a compromise. Strong wind didn't help either! Astrophotography is possible with a Dobsonian and equatorial platform!. Nuts, bolts, studding and washers are all purchased. Just night I was able to have my first session of drift alignment. Two sandwich cake tins. At its heart, a GEM telescope mount consists of two axes mounted at right angles to each other. I gotta ask then, why not just jury-rig a standard telescope equatorial mount (or build one in that style). This means that the telescope's OTA (Optical Tube Assembly) can be pivoted up and down (altitude) and right or left (azimuth).These are fine for visual observation and short exposure photography, but if you want to try your hand at astrophotography, you will need to mount your telescope on an equatorial (EQ) mount that allows you to align your telescope with the latitude at your location.Upgrading your alt-az mount to equatorial can be expensive, though. I've not seen published equipment load limits for this mount, but I've heard people suggest an upper limit of 55-60lb for an EQ6. Between which slides the base plate of the RA axis – controlled via a threaded rod for the altitude part of polar alignment. Motorized & Computerized Equatorial Mounts Perhaps the greatest innovation in the Astronomy industry was the advent of the Computerized Equatorial Telescope Mount, commonly referred to as a “GO-TO” Mount. There are several hundred such items, so it adds up. My total cost was around $400. % of people told us that this article helped them. Step 12 answers your question. The word telescope now refers to a wide range of instruments detecting different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, and in some cases other types of detectors. I am in the process of designing and building an equatorial mount for tracking and guiding of a DSLR camera + lens and/or a small telescope (perhaps up to an 8" SCT optical tube). Orion, … All parts are machined from aluminium, stainless steel with the odd bit of silver steel or brass. "); Various tracking tests show periodic errors of about 20 arc seconds – however, one should read much into those figures. We have documented our build with downloadable photographs available from the … To prevent any errors creeping in, I decided on a final machining operation just before final construction where I skimmed the bottom of the dec plate where it attaches to the top of the RA shaft. Each shaft has a 7 inch diameter worm gear. Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 75,306 times. 400. This article has been viewed 75,306 times. Is that right, will I need a five feet long plank? I’d been frustrated by the lack of ability for my Zhumell Z10 10″ Dobsonian reflector telescope to track the night sky. No castings. This is a full equatorial mount of good stability, and for a reasonable price as good astronomical telescope mounts go, but not likely the mount you get with an inexpensive telescope. This means that one of the DEC bearings, the dec worm wheel and clutch, the worm gear and the motor and all the metalwork that holds it all act as a counterweight. Set the latitude scale to your latitude and aim the polar axis so it points north. Two triangular sides of a box to hold the RA axis. Add a wedge to turn the alt/az form mount into an equatorial means I lost any chance of pointing north. If you consider all the pieces you have to cut, that's a safe bet. Let's look at the Losmandy product range. Much credit due to these pages from which I gained a great deal of inspiration in the early stages. That said, you'd have to be balmy to try. The Dob is simpler to build...that's one reason why it's so popular. Two worm wheel and gear sets. This is always going to mean a compromise. There are many brands and types of telescopes out there. Equatorial mounts compensate for the Earth's rotation when you're stargazing, and as such are great tools for astronomical telescopes. 2x 30mm ID 62mm OD twin row self aligning bearings (SKF) about £15 each. Finally this summer I have got the homemade GEM mount installed in my observatory and in service. The tube was made from a concrete form (sonotube) and the mount was built entirely of 2-inch plumbing parts. I have never seen an 11" OTA on a wedge. Click on the thumbnail below - as you can see there is a bit of wobble in the DEC guiding which needs looking at. To create this article, 9 people, some anonymous, worked to edit and improve it over time. There is nothing to stop me re=making the side plates out of something thicker in the future. God alone knows how many hours I've spent either working or thinking on this project. (no idea £30 ??? The bearings on each shaft are spaced as widely as practical for stability. One aspect that helps with load capacity is the offset join between the end of the RA axis and the DEC base plate. Frustrated with the high cost of a proprietary Go To, the author developed a free, open source, DIY option, rDUINOScope Boiana.. rDUINScope Boiana is an open source Go To unit. The point is I never set out to save money. My lathe headstock is only 20mm. You will need to measure the length and width of the mount. £5 (since you ask, also known as prefabricated worm wheel covers). I own a 7x12 mini lathe and a micro-mill, so I'm not going to be making 24 inch worm wheels. Each wheel has 360 teeth with a pitch of 1.5mm, The Meade system was eventually discarded and replaced with a homemade. In hindsight I wish I'd gone for thicker, e.g. If your telescope mount and OTA (optical tube assembly) are large, the wedge will make them even heavier. Astrodon 6nm Ha Filter. wikiHow is a “wiki,” similar to Wikipedia, which means that many of our articles are co-written by multiple authors. The majority of telescope mounts you can buy are designed with a certain element of portability in mind. The designs are all freely available and a community of helpful makers has sprung up around it. To create this article, 9 people, some anonymous, worked to edit and improve it over time. By signing up you are agreeing to receive emails according to our privacy policy. The design of the homemade DIY GEM mount is simple in the extreme. The telescope is attached far enough away from the mount to remove meridian flips on long integrations. These have a slot cut in them to allow altitude adjustments. Homemade GEM telescope mount slew video When you construct your own DIY telescope mount, the pleasure you take from each of your images increases by many magnitudes. The legs consist of three wooden triangles bolted to the … Jan 15, 2019 - Lcas build your own equatorial mounting german equatorial telescope mount explore scientific iexos 100 pmc eight Hence my 30lb imaging rig is counterbalanced by 1 modest weight. Sometimes I worked intensely on the DIY telescope mount project, and sometimes the project laid untouched for months and months. The reason a wedge is needed for astrophotography is that if you do not align the telescope to true north, a photographic exposure of any significant length will show trails on all points of light except the one at the center of the image. The shafts pass through high quality twin row angular contact bearings. What fun. Barn Door Mount * Observing Stool * Cheap and Simple Red Dot Finder Mount PST Eyepiece Shield * Eyepiece Case * Key Reel Red Light Keeper Kid Peek II * Observation Log and Sketching Forms * Telrad Dew Shield Telescope Mounted Green Laser * Observer's Eyepiece Bag Vintage Telescope Restoration Towa 339 "Katana" * DIY SCT and Mak Cooler Mind you I don't have anything that heavy to put on it, so for now the point is a little moot. You'd be amazed at how you can work solidly in the workshop for a day, and still end up with one tiny part of the whole machine. A summary about the DIY german equatorial telescope mount I have made and used for astrophotography in my observatory. I've installed the telescope mount in my observatory and wired up all the cameras and electrics. A rough summary of costs is found here, Things that I particularly remember making/doing. By using our site, you agree to our. I might not have a better mount, but I have a heck of a lot more personal satisfaction. In the 20th century many new types of telescopes were invented, including radio telescopes in the 1930s and infrared telescopes in the 1960s. The equatorial is more complicated, but still not out of the question even for those with just basic tools. Such a test is a little way off, but we are certainly hoping to get there! But making stuff is a hobby so you can argue how much you count those costs. Whilst there is little merit in recommending this irrational approach to others, it does have the benefit of being far more fun than going out and buying the same EQ6 that everybody else owns. On "Things you will need" - "...five feet long and at least four inches wider than the base of your scope mount (for the 6SE, 11.25" wide will do)." On the downside, everybody will know you are completely mad. Fred Tretta published a paper in the Riverside Telescope Makers Conference at 1980 that detailed the Main homemade German equatorial GEM telescope mount project Category page Therefore I do not have to design in much portability. This one, however, can easily be modified to allow adjustment if you so desire.The images depict a wedge for a Celestron NexStar 6SE 6" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope, but with a little ingenuity and some elbow grease the concepts can be applied to any telescope mount. Keeping things simple is usually the best. After MUCH research, I found that the cheapest way for me to get basic (and automatic) sidereal tracking is to build (or buy) a motorized equatorial platform, which required absolutely … Only members of the mirror-making brigade (and they are even more potty than me) will fully appreciate the large satisfaction you get from doing astrophotography with a homemade telescope mount. A couple of round plates with a big 120mm OD bearing between them. try { On the other hand, I'm not sure about putting 100lb of equipment on it. Design a German Equatorial Mount Jeff Beish INTRODUCTION After a question from a planetary observer/telescope maker was posed to me concerning telescope mounts a reference came to mind that may interest other telescope makers. They are made from 10mm aluminium plate. Making any sort of telescope mount is a major undertaking. As a bonus there are no standards to live up to, thus a much greater sense of freedom. You may want to search the Internet for "DIY FORK MOUNT" for construction ideas, as you would not be reinventing the wheel. Easy to move if you really wanted to. I didn't design for a particular load capacity – I was just aiming for "very strong". This could make fixing the polar alignment tricky, but I only have to do it once, so I'll cope. The threaded rod which raises the plate passes through a tapped hole in a thick part of the box bracing. My mount is going to be put in my observatory and then never moved for years. Picking up the telescope mount project The telescope shown in a six inch Newtonian. Instead we decided to make our own DIY telescope mount. Be careful when moving the unit, and check the tripod's specifications to make sure it can handle the additional weight of the wedge. Your OTA is probably way too big for a wedge. In essence, it's a telescope built onto a gun mount, which balances through friction as it swivels on an LP record. See more ideas about diy telescope, telescope, telescopes. Please check out the recent images recent images page which shows the images I've taken using this mount. The design is also dictated by the tools I have. All tip submissions are carefully reviewed before being published. This operation ensures that the bottom of the dec plate is parallel to the DEC axis of rotation - and therefore parallel to the RA shaft. I tried an autoguided image. For example, I will be able to pick up IC1805 (Heart Neb) coming up in the East at about 6pm on a November evening and track and image it for 7 or 8 hours. We use cookies to make wikiHow great. screen will show your current coordinates). The vast majority of affordable amateur telescopes that you can purchase come with what are known as "alt-azimuth" mounts. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? First test of putting the big telescope on the DIY mount However, in many cases I had to buy things that I could not make easily, such as the ball bearings and shaft steel. 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