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.
be careful there are no 'pinch' points on the scope mount
that could chop the cable though, a short on the USB could kill
the laptop.
I have a few general purpose voltages on the GEM that I can tap
into that don't rely on a PC (but that's not exactly helpful for
remote observing I suppose).
I'm always after either 6v/9v/12v DC for something on my
scope so I made it permanent.
And it's routed through the neck of the GEM in such a way as to never
foul on anything in the dark.
A small 12V gel cell strapped to your mount is easily wired to your fan and will last for ages. I think I would be going that way instead of using the USB.
Powering the cooling fan on my 10" newt
