So we went to the "Before and After Science" exhibition at the Art Gallery as part of the Festival/Fringe.
On the ground floor was a piece called "The Aesthetics of Amateur Astro-imaging". Did anyone see this? (Maybe even someone here made it!)
The piece is the shell of a car (Commodore?) that has nothing left except a drivers seat (located where the back seats normally are). The roof of the car serves as a mount for the hefty looking tripod, which has 3 refractors on it (Skywatcher, Williams Optics and one other). They are connected to the laptop inside the car. It is clearly a real setup.
I'm guessing the car serves as a comfortable place to sit and provides some shelter, as well as the mounting surface!
It was strange to see this in the art gallery and not the museum (for example), but then if you define art as creating new things out of existing, different things, then I guess it certainly does that!
Years ago there was a Honda Odyssey where the front seats could swivel round, the mid/rear seats could be removed, and it had a sliding moonroof. I always thought all this needed was a retractable central pier with scope on it, ready to pop up through the roof and you'd be all set to go.
The other thing your post reminds me of was a solar eclipse trip to Bombala (showing my age here) where one group of uni students had their complete setup - based on a 16mm cine camera connected to a questar 3.5 - mounted in the back of a small van; all they had to do was fling the doors open and film.
Another candidate for an easy conversion might a recent and very ugly small Citroen that has a roll-off roof (literally) as its made of canvas.
