[Marko of Oz (Mark)]

Getting the primary mirror to ambient temp seems to be important for both visual and astrophotography.

Because the cooling fan on my bintel reflector chews through 8 AA batteries pretty fast I only ever used it a couple of times.

Today I grabbed an old usb cable, cut off the end that dosen't plug into the laptop. Cut the battery holder off the fan power cable and spliced that cable into the power wires of the usb cable. The fan is 12v and I think usb only supplies 5v but it seems to be enough.

Works a treat. Still get about 3 hours life out of my lappy battery with the fan running constantly.

Only adjustment I had to make was to tell the computers Power Management to not turn off the usb ports to save power.

cheers

Mark