Making a dob base for a 130 newt

[irishbloke]

I was over at a friend's house last night to look at the telescope she had got for her birthday last november but hadn't got much use of it. She's a 12 year old girl and the scope was a celestron 130 newt and the mount was a big heavy equatorial mount with a wee motar on it.

For a start this is a 4ft girl and the tripod was high enough for me at 5'11"! The motor attached to the RA stopped the RA *** being used.

First thing, I took the motor of the RA, she doesn't need it. Next how do you explain to a 12 yr old girl (not that this is a sexist thing, anyone who has not used a scope before), how to set up and use the eq mount?

The mount and tripod weighs a ton and I thought a dob base would make the scope a bit more useful for her.

So my question is anyone got ideas on how to build adob mount for a small scope?

Thanks

Brian

[Cornelius Varley]

The Skywatcher 130 Heritage is the same size as the Celestron tube this should give you an idea for a mount. Orion use a similar design on their StarBlast Astro Telescopes. A bit more basic but using some readily available plumbing fittings is KidsPeekII dobsonian mount which you should be able to adapt to the shorter telescope.

Peter

[LukeSkywatcher]

I WAS thinking that a Dob base similar to the one on the Heritage would be easy enough to construct. The Heritage scope/design uses a side mounted dovetail fitting. The size and ease of use/weight etc would be ideal for a 12 yr old child.