My custom equatorial platform from Tom Osypowski has finally arrived! It is absolutely gorgeous and is extremely strong and rigid. From his advice, I purchased a dual axis aluminum platform. This is the ultimate visual and imaging platform for a Dobsonian. The platform is operable manually with a hand control… Continue Reading... "Automated guiding with a Tom Osypowski equatorial platform"
I took this for fun with my LG V30 phone while the platform was whizzing away on it’s own taking one minute exposures. This is a single 13 second exposure using the default camera app in manual mode. The moon was almost full and was right behind the tube, so… Continue Reading... "Artsy shot of the new equatorial platform"
The second test of my new equatorial platform was NGC 281, the Pacman nebula. I tweaked some settings in PHD2 and got phenomenal results, with 40 of 43 images being perfect! Each image is a one minute exposure at 1600 ISO. Incredible detail is revealed from the longer exposures. Not… Continue Reading... "The Pacman"
The first run with my new Tom Osypowski equatorial platform was a pretty good success! I did get guiding to work adequately for this first trial, although I fiddled with some settings afterwards to get it working even better. For a first shot at guiding with no experience, I was… Continue Reading... "γ Cas Nebula"
I found an unnamed patch of hydrogen alpha near η Cygni in Stellarium and tried to give it a go. It was straight overhead, and my polar alignment must have been horrible, because I had drift over my 30 second exposures that was orthogonal to the tracking direction. So, a… Continue Reading... "Some unnamed gas"
With some recent tracking problems likely due to the rollers slipping on the aluminum strips that the platform rides on, I did an experiment and replaced the aluminum with some strips of thick, textured ABS plastic. The tracking definitely seemed to improve, although it was still not great. The Northern… Continue Reading... "NGC 7538, the Northern Lagoon"
After finishing up the Crescent nebula, I decided to try another target. With Andromeda being way too large to do, I picked her neighbor, M110. After snapping a few frames and watching them stack in real time, I wasn’t too impressed, so I called it a night. This is only… Continue Reading... "M110, just a white blob"
I decided to try to upgrade the tracking yet again on my platform, and purchased and installed a 100:1 planetary reduction stepper motor with a driver and an adjustable controller. It still has some bugs that need worked out, notably, the drive roller seems to slip on the aluminum runners.… Continue Reading... "NGC 6888, the Crescent"
I had a tough time last weekend with my cheap Celestron tracking motor, so I thought I would piece together something beefier. Well, after wasting one and a half nights on that, I dug the old Celestron motor out of the garbage and reinstalled it. Tracking was much better with… Continue Reading... "Getting my tracking groove back with IC 5146"
