My latest ONAG project (Tom Gray)

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My latest ONAG project

Looking for things to do in my spare time, and inspired by Jim Chung's book of 'Astro-imaging projects for amateur astronomers' (Springer 2015), I decided to have a go at adapting my Meade 1.25" flip mirror system to replace the standard mirror with a dichroic beam splitter.

I'm not unhappy with the performance of my astroimaging setup, given it is a 30 year old Meade 2080 LX5 f10 SCT equipped with a homemade autoguider, I think it performs pretty well. I'm sure most of my imaging issues are human error, as opposed to opto-mechanical problems, but I do enjoy the challenge of seeking to do better and maximise the potential of my ageing set up.

Off axis guiding gets round many of the problems with guide scopes and the mirror shift inherent in older SCTs. In the past I used a Lumicon giant 'easy' guider with an Olympus OM1; if manual guiding wasn't hard enough, this did make finding a guide star a little bit easier...but only a little!

On-axis guiding is an interesting approach to 'overcoming' many of these issues and dedicated equipment is available at a price. As a 'spendthrift', building and adapting comes naturally, and I enjoy the challenge of repurposing what I already have. With a very cheap 3x3cm dichroic mirror, adapter built using ply, an old hinge and 3" nail, this fits into my flip 'mirrorless' system.

Now to try it out... I'd be interested in the experience of others who have been inspired by Jim's interesting if challenging projects.

The OSC Club (One Shot Camera)
Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope (SCT) Imagers
Altair Astro 183 M/C Hypercams
UK Astro-Imaging

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