Off axis guider.

[astro_nutt]

Hi all. for years I've been thinking about having an off axis guider to better align those fuzzy bits when taking an image. I recently was give a film SLR camera which had been dropped and consequently broke open. Still, some of the internals were intact. I stripped the body to extract the flip mirror and levers attached and use this to make the guider. I made a new body from alum tubing and used plywood to make the connectors for the focuser. I found an old 50 mm 1.1/4 inch EP holder which is attached to the side facing the mirror. With the EP in place, I then move the mirror in place so I can see the image from the scope. Once aligned, I move the mirror back so the camera has the image from the scope. I added a slide to hold filters in front of the camera.
231955
I used a spare camera to show how it would look.
231956
Instead of threading a T ring to the guider, I made a platform to secure the camera. The camera has it's T ring fitted and sits inside the guider. I also fitted an O-III filter in the holder.
I sure some fine tuning will be needed afterwards.

[bojan]

Very interesting solution.

Apart from costing nothing (except time), it is also a great pleasure to make something work (again) :thumbsup:

[ZeroID]

To my understanding that's not an off axis guider. Basically just a flip mirror for final alignment tweaking. I have a 2" commercial one which I use for the same task.
An off axis guider stays in the edge of the optical field and is used to find a star so the guiding software can correct image tracking errors.
Am I missing something .. ? :question:

[astro_nutt]

Whoops!...I stand corrected. Thanks Brent. The off axis guider term stuck in my head. It is a flip mirror to help me align the faint stuff.
Cheers!

[astro_nutt]

Thanks Bojan. I do get pleasure, and headaches from working out solutions to make things work, but the end result is always worth it.
Cheers!

[Billyboy78]

I rarely get any original ideas but I copy very fast. I like the idea of the flip mirror, I can see that as being useful in the future. Nice.

[bojan]

I made something similar...
The idea was for mirror to move out of the way of main and perpendicular light path (I am guessing Questar may had similar functionality).
I intend to use it for my spectrometer.

[astro_nutt]

Very neat work Bojan.