My astronomy projects DIY

This is for you that think it's better to spend time then money on your hobbies.

Be careful if you want to do something similar as I do here. I do many mistakes and what's right for me can be wrong for you and your equipment, you can destroy it! Content:

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Mount:

EQ6 mount and 300 mm lens setup:

HEQ5 mount as a portable mount and how I control it with Raspberry / Astroberry:

EQ6 mount, dismantling / rebuilding:

My mount has become very heavy to rotate nowadays, time to do something about it.

EQ6 mount, wedge rebuilding:

Making of a concrete pier for a EQ6 / HEQ5 mount.

Repair of Skywatcher's Star Adventurer and looking inside part one

Repair of Skywatcher's Star Adventurer part two

Skywatcher's Star Adventurer wedge modification

Skywatcher's Star Adventurer L-bracket modification

Star Adventurer and angled viewfinder

This angled viewfinder made a revolution for me who live at latitude 60 degrees.

Star Adventurer, new modified tripod

When travel you need the equipment to be small and light.

How to build a equatorial mount that don't need meridian flip?

This is not my own project, it's a new astronomy friend who also has the name Lars.

Lars B's projects.

One more friend, Jacek and his building tips for astronomy:

Jacek's projects.

I just come by this simple EQ2 mount. Have not yet figure out to what use.

My first digital camera setup.

Focusing:

Implement a stepper motor focus with temperature compensation.

Repair and adjust focus friction slider.

Development of a 3" focuser with 3D-printed Rack and Pinion gears.

Development of a 3" focuser with 3D-printed Push Pull design.

To my new stepper motor focuser I need a driver that works with INDI drivers:

Repair of focus' fine adjuster.

My first attempt to build a stepper motor focus.

Image processing:

Get higher resolution with Drizzling or Super resolution technique:

Optics:

Pentax 645 FA* 300 mm ED f/4 lens:

Pentax 645 300 mm ED f/4 lens, can it replace my Canon 300 mm L f/4 as a low vignetting lens ?

Why don't design your own Newton telescope?

My full frame camera needs a bigger flattener to reduce the vignetting. This time I built my flattener system from a 3" x1 Altair Planostar Flattener.

DIY/3D Flat Field Calibrator project. When processing astro images it's important to have good quality MasterFlats.

To my new transportable mount I need some shorter focal length lens. A Sigma APO 150mm f2.8 maybe. I did some simple test how the vignetting looks.

Analyses of vignetting of my lenses and telescopes:

Astrophotography test of medium format Pentax SMC 67 165 mm f/2.8 lens:

Can I have any use of an old medium format lens?

Sigma APO 150 mm f/2.8
vs
Pentax SMC 67 165 mm f/2.8:

Can I have any use of an old medium format lens?

Ideas about a high efficient narrow band camera system.

Computers:

Making of battery box and astroserver

Now including both version 1 and version 2.

This is my second attempt to build an astroserver with a Raspberry. Now I use the much faster Raspberry Pi4:

Old project:
I'm sure many as I have thought about those small Raspberry computers and if they can be used as an astroserver. Can an old Windows guy like me learn how to build and use one?

This project didn't perform very well, mostly because of the slow computer.

INDI driver project:
In Linux most devices have INDI drivers. When you find something wrong with it you sometimes have to solve it by your self:

Others:

Small practical knobs and brackets. There is always a need for this and now it can be design in 3D CAD and then 3D-printed:

3D printer assembling and setup:

It's time for me to learn something new, 3D printing technology.

Rebuilding the telescope box to a telescope Carriage.

Big binocular, 25x100mm.

An observatory is something that I have dreamed about for many years. This is how I build mine.

Fight Light pollution with synchronized streetlamps

Make a database of stars to use in CdC for color calibration

After some years with my 3D-printer I got some experience how to do it. Now I want to test if I can design an off-axis adapter. A special one, medium format and two filter drawers.

Full frame adapter modification for Riccardi 2.5" field flattener to TS130 APO refractor and off-axis adapter implementation.

GoPro Camera for meteor shower photographing.

Making a heating band or dew heater for anti dew.

Old project:
How to get raw files from a web camera.

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