MyTelescopes
I own 2 telescopes:
- Skywatcher N 150/750
- MEADE LXD55 series telescope with SC-8
Both have GoTo mounts.
With the Skywatcher telescope and a Raspberry Pi HQ camera I already did some cool photos. I tried that with the MEADE too but the large focal length made it more sensitive to imperfections in tracking. That made me belief that I need auto-guiding.
The first assembly I made was more or less to proof feasibility. Instead of spending money in a guide scope I mounted a Raspberry Pi camera behind my search scope. With an OTA focal length of 2000mm I need about 200mm focal length for guiding. My finder scope has a magnification of 8, so I bought a 25mm tele-objective for the Raspberry Pi camera. All that came in a pice of plastic pipe to sit stable on my finder scope. The guiding camera still sees the crosshair of the search scope and adjusting focus is difficult, but PHD2 is able to guide.
For a stable power supply I added a 5V regulator directly on the Raspberry Pi.
What started as a feasibility study will likely become a permanent solution. Maybe I will buy a finder scope with 1.25" ocular that I can replace with a HQ camera.
After having so much success I decided to add also a guiding camera to the Skywatcher. Here I needed about 75mm focal length for guiding. I already have reused an old photo tele-lens for astrophotography and mounted that on the Skywatcher.
Pictures of that setup will come soon.
I am looking forward for the next nights with clear sky!