jACK101

Hi, Thanks for your replies. The telescope is a Nexstar 6se by Celestron.

I demolished my home designed observatory a few years ago due to increasing health problems. My granddaughter has now become interested and I have bought her a telescope. She would like to get into astrophotography, but I am not too keen to spend £4-500 on a wedge. I still have my original telescope mounting with 1/2 tonne of concrete. Would it be practical to make a fixed wedge using steel plate and triangular sides cut for my specific latitude? I could make these myself and get them welded by a local engineer? Could this be accurate enough to allow tracking? Thanks Jack

Sorry, It was a Nikon D3200 not 200 Jack

I hesitate to post this, all the rules have been broken, but it is my first DSO. I used a Celestron 925 but with no tracking and a Nikon D200. I do have the Celestron wedge but have not yet got it set up. This result is from 1 exposure of 1 second, no stacking. I realise that the quality is very poor, but I think I know what I need to do to improve it. Processing was done in Lightroom. I would appreciate any comments. Jack

Mike, I am also thinking about the design of a small observatory that I would like to build. On this topic I found item eBay item number: 400855884979 which is a manually operated winch for about £12 new. I have no experience in using one of these but I think it is worth a look. Most of them seem to use wire cable, but some have webbing straps. Hope you get a suitable solution. Jack