[Bucky1379]

Hi

I'm working out what I need to do for astrophotography and have a question regarding alignment of the main and guider 'scopes.

I would like to be able to use both 'scopes seperately as well as in their combined autoguiding / photographic roles and without having to align them both perfectly again when I want to use them together so I was wondering if anyone had any ideas how close to perfect their alignment needs to be.

Ideally, I would like both to be fitted with standard tube rings for their independant roles (rather than the guide 'scope having 3 point adjustable rings). I then plan to mount both side by side on a plate that is bolted to my mounts' dovetail.

I feel that I should be able to align them very closely using shims and slightly oversize holes in the plate (if that is required) and by marking the positions of the guidescopes rings against the plate and also how many shims are under each ring, I figure that I should be able to seperate them and then re-assemble the combination and get a quite accurate (and adequate?) re-alignment without going through a full alignment process.

Does this sound like a reasonable hypothesis? From my investigations it seems that rigidity between the two scopes (provided by a non flexible plate) is the most important factor in successful autoguiding so I feel that this approach should work but I don't have any experience to call on.

I also feel that an added bonus of mounting the two scopes like this rather than putting the guidescope on top of the main 'scopes rings would be to provide a more centralised total mass (ie closer to the mount's axes) which I also figure would help the whole process.

Does anyone have any thoughts that might help me decide if this approach could work?

Thanks

Steve M