Desktop tripod for 4" Shorty refractor.

[narky (Sam)]

My tripod has recently fallen to pieces. I've just moved into an apartment and was hoping to use it for daytime city snooping. Girlfriend has just broken her leg, figure she can do some rear window action.

My apartment is tiny, Im hoping someone might know of a small desktop tripod that I could use to mount it.

Telescope is a skywatcher sw102 (budget as) so I want a tripod to match (ie, I don't want a tripod that is worth more than the scope).

Any suggestions would be welcome.

[OzEclipse (Joe Cali)]

Your scope weighs 2.5 kg. You need a pretty solid photo tripod to stably support something that weight and with some length. Ignore small cheap tripods on ebay that claim to be rated to 12kg.

Even a Manfrotto 190 ($400) won't hold that weight with stability. You want something like a Manfrotto 475B($800) which is outside your budget and too big for a table top.

If you want a budget tabletop solution, Make yourself a DIY tabletop DOB mounting for it. If it's for your GF to look horizontally while seated at the table, don't make the sides tall enough for the scope to look up into the night sky. Keep it squat so she can sit and look horizontally. If you make a modular design, you can have exchangeable sides so that you can interchange the short sides with taller sides allowing for upward astro viewing.

For a 2.5kg OTA, you can make the whole thing very simply from dressed pine and lubricate the sliding surfaces with danish wax, candle wax or even soap.

Joe

[mura_gadi (Steve)]

Might be worthwhile seeing if the SW Virtuoso GTI is available as a mount only. Looks like a great little table top, goto option available, or scan for a 2nd hand one if you have the time.

The SW Virtuoso is a nice simple design and easy to copy if you want to try a little woodwork.

[Hoges (John)]

With a drill and a jigsaw, you can knock up something like the one pictured. I've made a few that all work very well for table top mounts. Teflon furniture glides from Bunnings sliding on melamine/formica covered mdf/chipboard. They work very well - you just have to make sure that saddle is deep enough so that the scope is balanced vertically. ie: if the scope doesn't sit deep enough, then it will want to tip over but if the scope sits too deeply it will want to return to horizontal.

[narky (Sam)]

Thanks everyone. I might just get her some binoculars. Find a tripod for when I want to return to star gazing.