Despite being a college class everyone regarded as an easy ‘A,’ astronomy is very hard work. Not only do many hours go into capturing a single image, the equipment itself must be constantly monitored well into the freezing cold of night. [Jerry] sent in a few neat projects that have made his nights much more comfortable.
First up is a mod for a focus controller. The focus of a telescope changes constantly with temperature, atmospheric conditions, and especially what filter is being used. The stock USB-nSTEP focuser [Jerry] used required hard-to-find unipolar steppers, so he modded his USB-nSTEM to accept bipolars with a Pololu A4988 driver.
Next up is [Jerry]’s very impressive DIY Off-axis guider that he machined himself. An off-axis guider allows an astronomer to guide the ‘scope without having to deal with a dinky, surprisingly flexible guide scope. We’re really impressed with [Jerry]’s machine skills, but that’s what you get when you’ve got an awesome mill like his.
Does he show his astrophotos somewhere? Searched his Flickr account but did not find anything.
Nice work Jerry, this is the 2nd DIY oag I’ve seen in a couple of weeks, very impressive :)
I’m part of a group that make our own ‘focuser’ boards, using some off the shelf parts (arduino, your favourite stepper driver board) and windows ‘ascom’ drivers, that’s a neat trick adding in a new driver board.
The focuser units are quite expensive (when you consider it’s a stepper motor, an MCU and a 1amp per coil stepper driver.) I think they work out around $100 upwards, building stuff yourself you can produce a unit for around $30 or so :)
I bet the difference between normal stepping and microstepping greatly improves his accuracy. Will need to pick a decent stepper though to cope with reduced torque when trying to hold the focuser when the telescope is pointing at Zenith.
And of course, being a bipolr driver you can still use a unipolar stepper wired up without the common wire(s) connected :)
I havnt really done anything yet. Still getting the scope put together how I want it. I am going to be using a Photometrics Quantix monochrome CCD with a Kodak KAF-6303e 6MP sensor. Its a real cool camera, literally, its internal thermoelectric cooler drops the CCD down to -30c.
@reggie, I have seen the arduino focusers, but did not see it till I had bought the USB-nSTEP. Oh well, its done now.
Im getting rolled off the movie I am working on now so I should have lots of time for doing some AP.
Nice work macona, isn’t it always the way, buy something then see a cheap mod for it? Either way they’re both very good mods/projects :)
Yeah, kind of. I knew when I was getting this scope there is the issue of mirror flop which can be alleviated by using an off axis guider. Then I got a killer deal on the camera, which I needed a filter wheel for, and my Ha filter is different thickness than the rest, which means I need to be able to electronically focus to automate everything.
It’s a slippery slope…