DIY 9x50 Finderguider

[nmoushon]

This was a bit of fun doing actually as I have never worked with metal mechines before only wood working mechines. My unlce has all the tools needed so I pretty much just stood there and watched as he carved up the aluminum like it was butter. It was real neat to watch it all go down. I will attempt to decribe what we did and let the pictures do the rest.

My desire was to attach my new QHY5-II to my celestron 9x50. The treads on the guide cam and the back of the finder where the right diameter but the wrong size threads. So I first tried to see if I could just make new threads but the dies required where way to expensive to buy for just this one project. So instead we tapped and drilled 4 holes into the silver ring (which came with the QHY) and did the same for the back plate of the 9x50 guider. Making sure the holes lined up of course. The back plate was easy as they where just through holes but we tapped the holes on the silver guide cam ring to accept small fine screws. Fed the screws through the inside side of the back plate which tighted the silver ring to the front of the back plate and thus keeping it not only tight in place but also keep it centered so that when the guide cam was in place it would be near perfectly aligned with the center of the finder scope. The pictures should be able to tell the rest. Very happy with how it all turned out. Oh and the back eye piece that screws off the back plate that is normally there does not quite fit inside the silver ring so I put it carefully inside choke of the lathe machine and carefully trimmed off some of the extra plastic that was on the lip and now it fits nice and snug inside the silver ring. So now I can put the eyepiece back in and still use it as a finder scope and a guide scope.

Now all I need to do is figure out how to get my laptop to work with my guide cam (and the clouds to clear of course) and I'll be attempting my first guided images! Can't wait!

[Andymac79]

Hats off. Nice mod, good luck with the guiding, it has its frustrations but in my opinion is the biggest single jump forward you can make in imaging. Nice one

[nmoushon]

Thanks Andy. It definately is frustrating trying to get it to work. Would be worse if I had clear skies but thankfully its storming here for the next several days. Can't believe I just was thankful for clouds....anyways looking forward to getting it working.

[sloz1664]

Nice neat job. The QHY5-II is an excellent little guide camera. Installing the QHY5-II Ascom driver means you can guide using the free and excellent PHD guiding software

compiled by Stark Labs.

cheers

Steve