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Hello from Darlington UK

mlwood37

By mlwood37
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mlwood37

mlwood37

Posted
Posted

Hi there

Im a new starter in this hobby. I bought my daughter a cheap reflector telescope for £30 from Tesco a few years ago and it was stuck in the cuboid. Thinking it would be fine to look at this untill we pulled it out to use it and found it a complete pain in the butt. My daughter lost complete interest were as i am the type of person who think hmm how can i make it better.

I managed to get a few pictures of the moon with it eventually but after a week of playing new i was wasting my time so i then put a little money to the side about two weeks ago and bought my self a Celestron Nexstar 102GT. It only cost me £180 inc delivery and came off ebay. I was very pleasantly surprised how well it performs and have managed to grab a couple of photos of the moon and other things. I all so got a power tank as well after reading it was useless with battery's.

Ive now made my own Cable to go from the Hand set to the PC and im planning on fully remote controlling the telescope over time. I bought my self a T2 adapter to work with my cannon 1100D and all bought a 1.25" 7 to 21 unbranded zoom lens.

I dont have much money to play with so im really happy so far with what i have achieved with so little. The cable to the 102Gt cost me £5.00 to make and i all ready owned a hardware USB to comport adapter. Next i wish to make a Cable to control the canon 1100D and all so a remote focuser.

The complete system has come to around £300 (not inc the camera which i already own)

I know my set up is no ware near as impressive as a lot of system out there how ever i think if i can get good pics from this for little cost and out lay i will be very happy.

pic below of my whole set up so far

001vnm.jpg

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catman161

catman161

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Welcome to SGL. That's a great little setup you have there. Great ingenuity :) I like the way you have stabilised the tripod with dumbbell weights, great idea. Here's to some clear nights

Skywatcher Skyliner 200p Dobsonian

Celestron Skymaster 15x70 Binoculars

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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mlwood37

mlwood37

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thank you, I was advised to do that and a good friend of mine had some lying around which he left me have. I intend to take the legs off at some point and replace them with much heaver ones so that i can stabilise it more. Im going to move the handset as well and attach it to the main moving section of the motorised mount because at the moment the cable is lot long enough and keeps being pulled on.

I think if i can do all this with as little out lay as possible it should be fun.

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mlwood37

mlwood37

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The weights are 2 Kilos each making a total of 8 kilos. They fit perfect in the tray and lift out easily enough. We tried a 10 kilo weight but found it to big and kept slipping off so when for the smaller ones instead.

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Robp

Robp

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Welcome to the forums!

Being a frugal person myself, its amazing what you can do with a little ingenuity and patience.

Consider the dumbbell idea stolen, should stabilize my tripod nicely :grin:

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