I built a roll-off roof observatory about 10 years ago to house a Vixen VC200L 8″ reflector to cut down on the setup time for the ‘scope. Now I’m no carpenter and the thing didn’t have a single square angle in it and it leaked like a sieve when it rained. Some trial and error pretty much fixed both problems and it became a usable observatory.

My ‘scope came with a Vixen GP mount and a Vixen Skysensor GOTO handset. Brilliant for finding where things are in the sky but, as it turns out, not so good for astro-imaging.

I spent many a night with my self-guiding Starlight Xpress camera trying to get the mount to accurately track the stars. The best I ever got was two minutes before it ambled off in a totally random direction. So I pretty much gave up in frustration about 5-6 years ago.

Meeting some old astronomy buddies at the SolarFest day in Dunsink Observatory on June 20th (2009) rekindled my interest in actively engaging in astronomy and in astrophotography.

So I did some Googling to see what equipment current astrophotographers are using and the Synta Skywatcher EQ6 PRO seemed to be one of the preferred mounts, so I ordered one. I knew I’d need an adapter made to allow me to use the EQ6 on the pier in my observatory. I found this adapter spec. on the ‘net and a page showing a machined pier adapter. However, my pier uses plates at its top, so I needed something custom built that included a plate to replace the existing one that houses the GP mount adapter.

You can see my modified adapter plans here:
Pier Mounting Plate
Adapter Ring
Adapter mated to Pier Plate

You’d think in these recessionary times that metalworking shops would be only to glad of a bit of extra business. Not a chance. I emailed my plans to about 10 companies. One got back to me saying they’d get back to me later (they didn’t despite me following up with a couple of phone calls). Another got back to me after a week or so with a quote of €213 plus tax. Way too expensive.

A friend pointed me to Beacon Hill Telescopes as a place to get custom adapters made for reasonable prices. They’re based in the UK and don’t have a web-presence, so I had to do things the old-fashioned way and phone Barry Watts, the proprietor. Asking him for his email address so I could send on my adapter plans, he said he didn’t have one and I’d have to snail mail the plans to him through regular mail.

A couple of days later, when he received the plans, he rang me back to discuss fees, tweaks and manufacturing time. The bottom line is that he can make the adapter for about 50 quid, plus postage and maybe some other small expenses.

So, for now, I’m in waiting mode until the adapter arrives…

[phpbay]astrophotography, 100, “”, “”[/phpbay]

Astrophotography Videos:

[tubepress mode=”tag” tagValue=”Astrophotography astronomy”]

Amazon.com BestSellers

[phpzon keywords=”Astrophotography” searchindex=”Books” num=”3″]

Filed under: My Personal Astronomy Blog