Camera Rotator

[Pscammp]

Hello all,

I'm hoping to get a little help and advice here if anyone can help !

 

I have a 10" Newtonian which I modified by attaching a CR2 2inch Moonlite Focuser to it. It has the Hi Res stepper motor on it and the Mini V2 controller which is hooked up

to my PC via ASCOM and I use Sequence Generator Pro for image capture and auto focusing. My camera is a QHY8L for the sake of full clarity and I have to drag it all outside

every time I want to do some imaging. 

 

In the medium future (due to a house move) I am planning an Observatory build in my new back garden/yard which will be positioned probably about 60 feet from the house.

Everything works great at the moment for a 'Mobile' setup just outside our current conservatory on the patio but when this Observatory build goes ahead in the future I can see

a very large problem developing due to the proximity of the Obs.

 

Currently, I use auto focus which is great but if I use SGP's framing and mosaic tool to frame an image and need to rotate the camera I just pop outside the conservatory to manually

rotate the camera in the focuser (guessing) based on how much SGP tells me to and in which direction. Sometimes I get it within the allowed tolerance and other times I have to pop

out 3 or 4 times to get it right. This is not so much of a problem NOW but imagine having to run 60 feet each time.......

 

Not Good   🤪

 

So, somehow I need to come up with a way of having Motor Rotation as well as motor focusing ! ! ! !

 

I have looked at the Moonlite focusers website but only see a rotator option for refractors and SCT's

 

Is it possible to somehow convert my CR2 to also rotate the camera also on my Newt  ?.....Has anyone done this already ? .....Any video's anywhere cos I cant find any  ? 

 

Any Help would be gratefully appreciated

 

Many Regards

Paul  

 

Edited October 18, 2019 by Pscammp

[Dr_Ju_ju]

Do you actually need to rotate the focuser, when what you want to do, can be done in post processing, i.e. rotate the image ?  

I've considered fitting a rotator to my ED80, Auduino\Stepper motor based, but I wouldn't fit one to a Newt, as you'd be rotating the whole tube assembly ??, throwing out all the balancing etc....  

[lux eterna]

My planning workflow includes "armchair framing" using Stellarium. I can see exactly what will fit on the sensor and how many degees of rotation I need, and usually I do the rotation in advance.  The scale is a picture I found with Google, then edited it in PS and printed on paper. I had to experiment a bit to make the scale ends meet nicely.

Ragnar

[Dr_Ju_ju]

Wouldn't rotating the focuser control assembly throw out the collimation ?? 

[blinky]

I really wish somebody - Pegasus/ZWO etc would produce a decent priced camera rotator, is the last thing to have automated, although Im not sure it would not end up being a pain if you use an OAG, imagine having to recalibrate after every rotation

[tomato]

Just posted today in this section  on this topic, albeit with a refractor. I haven't come up with a cheap motorised rotator, but have taken some of the guesswork out of the manual operation.