Star Adventurer Accessories

[Midnight_lightning]

I have been struggling with some aspects of my SA and came across some products that have solved a couple of issues so thought I would share my experience.

The first issue was finding a suitable tripod, one for home use and one for travel. The home use was solved with the recent Skywatcher stainless steel tripod with 3/8" screw (a modified HEQ5 tripod), which I highly recommend - bulky but solid.

The travel tripod was more problematic, I have an excellent carbon fibre travel tripod but it just isn't good enough for the SA. One of the challenges in finding a travel tripod is it needs to be high enough to use the polarscope which places even higher demands on the Tripod.

I have partially addressed this by using a right angle finder on the Polarscope  which means I can now manage with a much lower Tripod and am looking at the Berlebach range.  I used the "Neewer Perfect 1x-2x Right Angle Viewfinder for Canon,Nikon,Pentax,Panasonic and Other Digital SLR Cameras" (£25 on Amazon).  I find the quality of this finder adequate and the 2x zoom makes it much easier to get accurate positioning of Polaris - I also no longer get a stiff neck doing polar alignment. 

My biggest find was a chap in France, Phillipe, who makes/prints SA accessories and he supplied me with a printed connector that attaches the finder to the polar scope - it is simply brilliant. Very accurately made and held on with 3 thumb screws.  I'm very impressed with this, so much so that I went back and purchased his illuminator which replaces the SA one.

The new illuminator can be attached to the L-Bracket which means it's easy to check PA during a session. He also does a similar connector to allow the original SA illuminator to be attached to the L-Bracket (it also takes the Pole Master).

I am very impressed with these items, they are a little expensive but have transformed my use of the SA. If anyone is interested take a look at http://www.astrokraken.fr/

Hope this helps, I have read loads of posts around tripods, Polar alignment etc so I know there are quite a few people facing the same issues I had.

 

  

 

[JonC]

There are a few star adventurer bits on thingiverse, a right angle adapter would be handy so will print this when I get a chance

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2762334

[SteveNickolls]

http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/projects/project-star-adventurer-angled-viewfinder/project-star-adventurer-angled-viewfinder.html

https://www.darkframeoptics.com/product/polarite-right-angled-polarscope

Cheers,
Steve