Star adventurer + guide scope mounting help

[rnobleeddy]

I have a star adventurer with the green L shape bracket. I want to attach a guide scope somewhere, presumably at the bottom, so I'm wondering if there's a bracket I can buy or if I'm better off making one? The guidescope is held by the ~60mm svbony guide rings at the moment. Obviously I could consider attaching it atop the refractor, but the way the refactor currently mounts to it's single ring makes this appear tricky.

 

 

Then, perhaps more speculatively,  to make the whole thing mountable on my EQ6 mount as well (for which it appears the OTA is always parallel to the dovetail that fixes to the mount) I think I need another bracket + a new doevtail, so something the bar in orange below. I think I can definitely make a bracket for this one myself - a sturdy piece of wood would probably do.

 

But before I get lost, wondering if anyone has any solutions? I'd prefer not to spend £100s for pretty colorful custom telescope solutions, so probably will end up with boring metal brackets that might be designed for something else. 

Also, worth checking I haven't lost the plot with the EQ6 - is there any reason why I need to OTA to be parallel to the mounting bar, or will it sort itself out regardless?

 

 

 

[Gfamily]

A friend was using a TS60 scope on his SA, but had to use a counterweight because he was using a dSLR.

 

To allow him to do guiding he attached the guidescope to the counterweight bar.

Edited March 18, 2021 by Gfamily
Add image of guidescope as counterweight

[rnobleeddy]

28 minutes ago, Gfamily said:

A friend was using a TS60 scope on his SA, but had to use a counterweight because he was using a dSLR.

 

To allow him to do guiding he attached the guidescope to the counterweight bar.

 

Thanks. I might be able to rig that up at the weekend, although I have a (maybe) chunkier 50mm guide scope - I'm guessing that's the zwo 30mm? 

 

I'd be interest to hear how well guiding the SA works? Although as I'd like to be able to swap the setup out to my main mount, I'll probably set up a guide scope regardless.

Edited March 19, 2021 by rnobleeddy

[Chefgage]

With regards guiding with the star adventurer I get at best about 2" RA. I know others get similar results. So not the best but from tests I have done this means I can go from 45 seconds using a 420mm length refractor non guiding to about 3 minutes guiding. But this is not always the case. For example the other night I was only achieving 60s before I got star trails so something was not right that night.

[rnobleeddy]

35 minutes ago, Chefgage said:

With regards guiding with the star adventurer I get at best about 2" RA. I know others get similar results. So not the best but from tests I have done this means I can go from 45 seconds using a 420mm length refractor non guiding to about 3 minutes guiding. But this is not always the case. For example the other night I was only achieving 60s before I got star trails so something was not right that night.

Thanks - with the focal reducer, the scope I have is something like 283mm. My main concern is how well I can polar align - it seems easy for the tripod to move between polar alignment and attaching the camera or OTA?

[Gfamily]

If you use the L bracket, you can still use the polar scope with the imaging equipment attached, so you can confirm the alignment is still good.

Edited March 19, 2021 by Gfamily

[Chefgage]

1 hour ago, rnobleeddy said:

Thanks - with the focal reducer, the scope I have is something like 283mm. My main concern is how well I can polar align - it seems easy for the tripod to move between polar alignment and attaching the camera or OTA?

I would suggest mounting your camera and scope first and then polar aligning. That way you minimise the chanceof the mount/tripod moving after polar aligning. As the post above mentions if you use the L bracket then this can be positioned so the polar scope can be looked through with the scope and camera attached.

[rnobleeddy]

3 hours ago, Chefgage said:

I would suggest mounting your camera and scope first and then polar aligning. That way you minimise the chanceof the mount/tripod moving after polar aligning. As the post above mentions if you use the L bracket then this can be positioned so the polar scope can be looked through with the scope and camera attached.

Thanks - I'd forgotten this was possible. I was mounting a DSLR directly in the past, in which case I think you're forced to do it in 2-steps. 

Glad you reminded me - who know's how long it would have taken me to realise!