Blair
18-03-2013, 10:57 PM
Well for a wee while I've been searching for something like my old ETX or argo navis system to point my dob to hard to find objects as star hopping in my light polluted Gold Coast home is quite hard.
After searching for a guiding setup I had it all along, on my iPhone 5 and iPad. Sky Safari plus was the answer. I just needed to be able to mount this on the scope and try it out. Well, a quick scrounge in the garage and I came up with a metal angle bracket and velcro. I have a plastic back cover for the iPhone which now has velcro on it to stick it to the bracket. The bracket itself also attaches to the scope with velcro up by the eye finder scope.
After finding Betelgeuse and centering the scope on it I centered skysafari on it in the software and stuck it to the scope. Bingo and from there on I could search for anything good enough to see and was directed around the sky with an arrow on the iPhone after searching for an object in the software. It was all well in the finder scope using the software and had a great session. To easy!
Only pointing to almost zenith made the velcro come apart slightly thus loosing the use of the guiding software. Now to make this better and get the iPad on the scope for an easier session with Sky Safari as the smaller screen of the iPhone makes pressing the buttons a little difficult. Maybe a large clamp around the dob to which the ipad is attached to the clamp via a base plate...hmmm.....:lol:
After searching for a guiding setup I had it all along, on my iPhone 5 and iPad. Sky Safari plus was the answer. I just needed to be able to mount this on the scope and try it out. Well, a quick scrounge in the garage and I came up with a metal angle bracket and velcro. I have a plastic back cover for the iPhone which now has velcro on it to stick it to the bracket. The bracket itself also attaches to the scope with velcro up by the eye finder scope.
After finding Betelgeuse and centering the scope on it I centered skysafari on it in the software and stuck it to the scope. Bingo and from there on I could search for anything good enough to see and was directed around the sky with an arrow on the iPhone after searching for an object in the software. It was all well in the finder scope using the software and had a great session. To easy!
Only pointing to almost zenith made the velcro come apart slightly thus loosing the use of the guiding software. Now to make this better and get the iPad on the scope for an easier session with Sky Safari as the smaller screen of the iPhone makes pressing the buttons a little difficult. Maybe a large clamp around the dob to which the ipad is attached to the clamp via a base plate...hmmm.....:lol: