EQ mount with no meridian flip

[Astrofriend]

Now when I have started to use my observatory I face a new problem, meridian flip. Earlier at my balcony I didn't have any problem because I only had a free view to East.

Can that problem be solved and still have a German equtorial mount? After have googled on it I found some people who have solved it, not exactly how I want it but close.

I have collected my information on my homepage and a first simple drawing how I think will be a good solution for me who live at latitude 59 degrees:
http://astrofriend.eu/astronomy/projects/project-eq-mount-with-no-meridian-flip/project-eq-mount-with-no-meridian-flip.html

I'm a bit angry at myself that I didn't think about this before I built the pier and observatory, it had been much easier if I had been built it alreday from the beginning.

Tell me if you have done any attempt to solve this, maybe better ideas then my own.

/Lars

[fsr]

The link to cloudynights has a good picture that shows how they reached their goal. But it seems like you want to use an AZ mount on a wedge. Not a bad idea, but make sure that the mount can be configured to track correcty on a wedge.
However, if you want to keep the EQ6, are you going to go with the cloudynights design?
Did you consider to just start the photo session "weights up"?

[Wavytone]

Yes...

A fork mount, or one-arm fork... or

A harmonic drive mount, the only ones I'm aware of are from Korea and start around $10k, these are basically an equatorial where the drive is so rigid no counterweights are required and it relies on the brute strength of the harmonic drive coupling. Point anywhere...

Forget the equatorial bit and use an AZEQ6 in altazimuth mode, works perfectly well. On a balcony, if the mount is levelled accurately a one-star alignment will work.

[dannat]

ioptron zeq25 cem25 (http://www.ioptron.com/product-p/7100p.htm) ioptron do bigger payload also

[Astrofriend]

Hi everybody,

Don't forget that this is a low cost project.

If I could find a not too costly AzAlt mount it would be fine, but what I have seen they are all very expensive. If the software can't setup the mount as an EQ mount it could be setup as it is placed at north pole. The atmosphere diffraction will then not be correct calculated and for very close objects it will be a pointing error.

If I can't find any cheap mount I have too keep my EQ6 and with a special arm I think it would work fine.

The future plan is to not have a counter balance weight, or more precisely, the counter balance will be another telescope. That's another reason to have this no flip construction (or no hit mount).

You can see at my drawings what I mean:
http://astrofriend.eu/astronomy/projects/project-eq-mount-with-no-meridian-flip/project-eq-mount-with-no-meridian-flip.html#part06

My observatorie's walls will block the lower altitude objects more at the lower telescope. If it's important to take photos of a lower altitude object then in that special case I will have the most important telescope on the upper side. But normally I don't think I need to flip the telescopes and then no extra problem with guiding or up side down oriention of main camera.

I'm not sure how to set this up in future, maybe one wide field and one narrow field telescope. Or maybe two identical telescopes, but with one rgb sensor on one telescope and one mono chromatic sensor on the other telescope.

Two telescopes doesn't load the mount more then one telescope with counter balance weights. But it will be more sensitive to winds.

I will say that I'm not sure if I will built this special mount arm, but it's interesting to investigate and do some drawings.

/Lars