James Paulson's roll off roof observatory at the Sunridge Observatory site, taken in the summer of 1986, housing a 10 inch f/5 Cave Astrola Newtonian reflector telescope



Saturday, April 24, 2010

LXD75 Camera Mount - Part 1



I ordered a couple of pieces of equipment as a preliminary step to using my LXD75 mount with my camera alone. I purchased an Astro Tech 7 inch Vixen style dovetail from Astronomics and the Orion EQ1 1/4-20 adapter for the EQ1. The two pieces couple together very well, and will allow me to place either my camera or my ST-80 on the LXD75 mount for a nifty and simple grab and go usage. I plan on supplementing this piece with a tandem bar, and mounting the EQ1 adapter on one side and the tube rings for the ST-80 on the other side so I can use them both at the same time. The mount will handle this configuration just fine, and will allow me to use the ST-80 with an autoguider and the camera with a longer focal length prime lens or something like a 66ED refractor/field flattener combo for some easy to do astrophotography.

What amazes me is how deep you have to dig to find parts to assemble to make something this simple, and how much they actually wind up costing in the end. There is certainly room for improvement in this marketplace.

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