celestron 130 and piggyback finder scope

[nicks90]

Just thought I'd post a picture of my modest setup.

Its a celestron aztromaster 130 with RA drive. If any of you have read about these scopes you will know the red dot finder is a joke! So I decided to mount my little 70mm f5 frac on the camera piggy back bolt on the rearmost ota ring. Unfortunately this didn't work (not aligned), but I noticed the front ota ring also has a hole in it for a piggy back camera bolt.

Solution was to get the grinder out and cut a length of 4mm plate, drill 3 holes in it and mount the plate to the ota rings with some little 2.5mm bolts and put the proper camera piggy back bolt through the middle of the plate.

Once attached the little frac lined up perfectly with the scope!

With the supplied 25mm ep the frac gives x14 mag, which is fine - but I might keep my eyes peeled for a cheap second hand 30/32mm kellner or plossl to give x11 mag. Ideal wide field finder scope. Plus having the diagonal will make it easier on my neck and back when doing the usual eq mount gymnastics!

The frac weighs virtually nothing and only needed the counter weights moving down the shaft half an inch to get it all balanced up. No idea if the mount will cope - as the eq3-2 isn't the sturdiest, but time will tell if I ever get a cloudless evening!!!!

PS. Scope is in front of number 1 hobby - my defender that I use for trialling and playing :-)

Cheers for looking,

Nick

[nicks90]

And the next job is to make some rotation rings out of some spare rubber door seals and some long jubilee clips I have in the garage.

[AstroTux]

While you're at it, why not remove the RDF? Just need to unscrew the two black screws next to the OTA and it slides off backwards.