Alt-Az Binocular Mount

[MarkRadice]

I have a pair of relatively large 100mm APM binoculars with (second hand) 19mm panoptics. This offers fantastic views, akin to looking through a porthole of a spaceship.  I can quite happily get lost scanning the Milky Way.  For the past few years, I used a homemade heavy duty parallelogram mount to carry the binoculars.   It is really blumming heavy though, especially with those counterweights!  This makes it excellent in a static observatory but not easily transported to a nearby dark sky site or different parts of the garden.    The picture below shows them at our dark sky site on Salisbury Plain.

Looking for a more portable solution, I came up with a homemade altaz mount atop a Triton camera tripod from Telescop Express.    The tripod has an adjustable centre post so I can raise and lower it when looking at the horizon or the zenith.  A friend machined an aluminium disc that screw to the 3/8 stud and has an M10 machine screw brazed to it to hold the mount.  The mount is a quick and dirty prototype to check my dimensions that actually works surprisingly well.  It will probably end up being used for longer than originally planned!

This was used to good effect at our club's Perseid Star BQ on Saturday.  Observers from over 6' to just over 5' looked through the binos at objects from the horizon to the zenith.  A simply turn of the handle and the binos were at the correct height.  This approach was also very cost effective - far cheaper than buying a commercial alt-az mount although I was lucky to have the base plate made by a friend as a Homer at work.

I've put a more detailed article on my website: http://www.refreshingviews.com/yew-tree-observatory/articles/

Clear skies,

Mark

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Very nice solution. I have a P-mount (home-made) which is quite portable, but would not be able to handle these big bins (OK for the 15x70 Helios Apollo). If ever I get such big bins I will certainly make something like your U mount

[laudropb]

Very nice piece of DIY. A great idea. Thanks for posting.

[baggywrinkle]

Looks very good.

[ToxoLight]

Nice job mark.

[MAN or ASTROMAN]

Nice bit of kit.