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Hello fellow Instruct-ables... What better way to celebrate space than to look at it through a really big telescope? I have been an ATM for quite a w...
The mount is made from mostly easy to find scrap parts I found on line. I spent a lot of time looking for scrap pieces that were close to sizes I need...
This is a step that I thought about for a good long while. An equatorial mount has to have some adjustment for the angle of altitude in order to track...
I trimmed the mounting tabs from the large pillow block bearings and ground down the sides with an angle grinder. After some drilling and some tapping...
My large pillow block bearings were sold to me as 3"ID however when they arrived they were closer to 2-5/8"ID. I was able to find 2-5/8" aluminum cyli...
I had the 1-1/16" dia x 24" long dec shaft pressed into a 2-1/2" x 2" x10" Aluminum bar. For the correct alignment of the tube, this unit has to be tr...
The dec shaft rides in two 1-1/16"ID pillow block bearings mounted to a 1/2" aluminum plate which is bolted to the RA shaft. I added a 4"wx14"l alumin...
In a big scope the accuracy of the tracking is directly tied to the size of the worm gear. Big worm gear means smaller errors. A big worm gear also ne...
The worm drive is built from pieces of aluminum bar cut from left over material. The worm gear came from another smaller drive and happened to fit. Th...
The tripod hub is made from two disks of aluminum bolted to three leg mount bars. The top of the hub is machined flat. The bolt hods the chassis to th...
The tripod legs are built up from oak flooring boards discarded as scrap by a neighbor. They are as long as the shortest piece so abou 48"l.
All the different assemblies together as a mount head.
After some fiddling, refitting, stiffening sanding and painting, the finished mount....
Ah, now it's time for the cool stuff... The Objective! This lens was made by Istar Optical, at the time a relatively new manufacturer of telescope op...
The tube is a section of aluminum tube made by Hastings Irrigation. I had to special order the size as shipping an 8' l tube costs as much as the tube...
The objective needs to be mounted in a collimatable ring. This ring was routed from three pieces of HDPE drilled and tapped for three push-pull screw ...
Traveling with a 9'l tube is tough, traveling with an 8' tube is much easier, fits right in the mini-van. To make things easier the dewshield slides o...
This refractor is an achromat which normally would not be suitable for photography. Due to it's large focal ratio (f15) and long focal length(2276mm) ...
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