My Backyard Test Assembly
Posted: Mon Aug 07, 2017 3:33 pm
Good day everyone...
Like most of you who are travelling to the eclipse, I made a test setup of the mount, scopes, and filters yesterday afternoon in the back yard.
I have borrowed an old Polaris equatorial mount from a friend and fitted it with a set of Vixen and Losmandy saddles to allow me to mount the William Optics 72mm and 70mm ED scopes side by side. I have a while light Baader Mylar filter for the 70mm, and have the Lunt 75mm/B1200Ha filer set on the 72mm scope.
The plan is to use the Mylar filters scope to view and image using a DSLR in the partial phases and be able to quickly remove the film at totality to photograph the views of totality. The Ha scope is mainly for another perspective of the partial phases, and will provide a preview of what may be visible in the way of prominences at totality. I will likely take a ZWO camera too...will have my laptop and could set it up as well.
I had one pic with Sandy looking through the scope, but she wasn't too happy about having it posted, so here is the hardware alone:
I am going to see if I can engineer a riser for the equatorial head this week...prefer no to have to stoop over the eyepiece as much.
If I were to take any more scope weight I would need a larger mount, and this kit needs to fit in the back of my SUV along with suit cases and 10 days worth of travel accessories for myself, my wife, and two teen age kids. Now that I think of it, we will only be home for a week before my son has to be moved into residence at the University of Guelph to start his first year there. I was in the same position 33 years ago, same university, just no eclipse
My, how time flies.
Brian
Like most of you who are travelling to the eclipse, I made a test setup of the mount, scopes, and filters yesterday afternoon in the back yard.
I have borrowed an old Polaris equatorial mount from a friend and fitted it with a set of Vixen and Losmandy saddles to allow me to mount the William Optics 72mm and 70mm ED scopes side by side. I have a while light Baader Mylar filter for the 70mm, and have the Lunt 75mm/B1200Ha filer set on the 72mm scope.
The plan is to use the Mylar filters scope to view and image using a DSLR in the partial phases and be able to quickly remove the film at totality to photograph the views of totality. The Ha scope is mainly for another perspective of the partial phases, and will provide a preview of what may be visible in the way of prominences at totality. I will likely take a ZWO camera too...will have my laptop and could set it up as well.
I had one pic with Sandy looking through the scope, but she wasn't too happy about having it posted, so here is the hardware alone:
- Scope-3.jpg (377.5 KiB) Viewed 4897 times
- Scopes-1.jpg (383.03 KiB) Viewed 4897 times
If I were to take any more scope weight I would need a larger mount, and this kit needs to fit in the back of my SUV along with suit cases and 10 days worth of travel accessories for myself, my wife, and two teen age kids. Now that I think of it, we will only be home for a week before my son has to be moved into residence at the University of Guelph to start his first year there. I was in the same position 33 years ago, same university, just no eclipse
My, how time flies.Brian
although I seem to mess up each time I practice, the last one took me 5 minutes to work out why the shutter wouldn't work, I then realised I was pressing the wrong button! too late if that happens on the day. At least I know to look out for that one on the day now.