well here i am my conundrum, bran new eq6 mount, 10" perched nicely atop set up my alignment and leave it there, go get the miss's about 10 min later and to find the object has "drifted "
Drift alginment must be out by a bit, so how do i do drift alignment? i have nothing to see the drift drifting.
I need to build me a cross hair eye piece
HOT GLUE i was told from a sagely advice
so i hot glued it up so now i have a nice cross hair eye piece
Ingredients
A un used high mag eye piece
Some very thinly pulled hot glue
some glue of some description
2 tweezers.
steady hand
and here it is ( i have run a yellow filter to keep the cross hairs protected)
very much so it would. but theres a trick to it. slight defocusing of the star in a newt gives the secondary shadow, you can get that shadow just large enough to be the same thickness as the hair, and the star illuminates the glue.
and then you can watch it drift from one side to the other easy as.
Yes a illuminated rectical is the best option though pretty dyam expensive and when your starting out its sometimes not a option. so this gives a cost effective (see almost free) rectical.
because i only have access to a ccd, i don't actually have one (yet). I thought it was a good idea to build one because if the ccd doesn't work for some reason the i always have a back up. not only that when doing my alignment for the go to i have a good cross hair to get the star centered.
No it wasn't useless.
There are lots of us out here that don't have the ready cash to be able to buy what we want when we want it.
That means that we have to either do without or make do with what we can knock up ourselves.
Good on you for having a go.
No it wasn't useless.
There are lots of us out here that don't have the ready cash to be able to buy what we want when we want it.
That means that we have to either do without or make do with what we can knock up ourselves.
Good on you for having a go.
I very much agree with you.
We are amateurs.
And I strongly believe that this forum should promote amateur approach, and not commercial one. There is enough commercial websites for that purpose.
BTW, what fun it is to go to the store and buy stuff ???
Anyone can do it. Only money is needed for it and nothing else.. even ideas for purchase come with advertising (just try and ask the retailer.. )
But to build something of your own design and hands... that requires a lot more. And it is certainly more fun :-)
thats what i thought, but after the first 3 people said that it was useless and you can buy better, pffft, makes me just say well get ed plus i can tell you now you don't need a double hair rectical to get the results needed. and it is only in recent times that illuminated recticals have become avalible. how do you think people used to do it?
I can tell you it wasn't with a hot glue gun. it was with spider web. have you ever seen what happens to spider web when light hits it? it shines plus the width of the glue that i used was comprable to a strand of hair.!
you can ask some of the people that have met me on this forum i love to build things and can do so extremely well. sometimes i don't have the facilities to build and get it out sourced hence the 10" rings i had made up for just a bit more than the cost of ordering them in. my eyes they are better.
For all the people that love projects to DIY ill keep posting my ideas and fiddlings, for all of you that don't want to do it DIY and keep saying that an idea is @r49... don't bother looking in this area, you should be looking at york optical, andrews communications and the like for the next place to burn your cash!
I came across this method a few months ago, and I must admit it does work. I'm not sure what type of camera you have, but you can use a dslr or a ccd in this situation.
Its very simple, and accuracy of polar alignment is only subject to the length of your exposure, the longer the exposure the more accurate the polar alignment.
It will certainly come in handy when those batteries run out on the illuminated reticule when you are in the middle of nowhere
to be honest with you i have used a meade 9mm illuminated rectical and this is better by a long shot, unless your spending in exesess of 100-150 bucks, the hand made one far out preforms the dodgy one! why because i can tell you now you can get hot glue really really fine, just keep pulling it and it will stretch and deform till its as thick as a hair if not thinner! it works for me and thats happy.
Some time ago I did similar job using optical fibre (glass). I had to remove the shield and outer layer (made of transparent plastic).
It worked (still does) very well in my finder.
On another occasion, I used glass from used bulb - melted it over the spiritus flame and stretched just like you did with hot glue. This procedure is a bit tricky because such a thin glass cools down very quickly, so I had to be careful to get long enough fibres before they would break.. but it worked also quite well.
However, the thinnest fibre you can get is from spiders :-)
Some time ago I did similar job using optical fibre (glass). I had to remove the shield and outer layer (made of transparent plastic).
It worked (still does) very well in my finder.
On another occasion, I used glass from used bulb - melted it over the spiritus flame and stretched just like you did with hot glue. This procedure is a bit tricky because such a thin glass cools down very quickly, so I had to be careful to get long enough fibres before they would break.. but it worked also quite well.
However, the thinnest fibre you can get is from spiders :-)
Well done Brendan, Bojan, I love seeing home-made projects!
I used fibre optic too on my finder a while back.
Works well when illuminated.
Stars shine through the opaque centre of the glass.
Not ideal, but dead straight.
Just by the by, illuminated reticles have been around a long time.
Having worked on many illuminated by 240v and candles, and having made an illuminated finder of my own after a design from a 1890's catalogue.
T'ain't hard to do, just perserverance.
Good on'ya Brendan
Necessity is the mother of invention after all!
You're on the money re the cheaper Reticle EP's - they're not the finest quality. I use mine for centering a prospective guidestar in the guidescope before replacing it with the webcam.
My hat is off to all the tinkerers on the forum as I'm afraid I take the easy route too often!
Doug
hey the easy was is sometimes the best way. like making a 10" newt nowdays its just not comprehendable to do so as the parts you buy are definately more expensive. Im a keen beliver that if the radio station is clear listen to it, if not find another radio station!
