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My Equipment:  Updated 1/30/2005

Celestron Classic 8 with CG-5 GEM mount + Meade Autostar.

Celestron Deluxe tele-extender used for prime focus and eye-piece/barlow projection.

Celestron camera adapter for prime focus

Toucam Pro 740k in Radioshack project box

1 rubber plumbing coupler to mount Vesta Pro camera body

1 rubber plumbing coupler/focal reducer to mount modified Vesta Pro SC camera body

 

Here is my Classic 8 on a CG-5 GEM mount robo-scoped with Autostar

 

The RA drive is connected to the plastic housing that comes on the CG5 mount.  I cut the threads off of a Meade 492 worm housing, and attached the them to the housing.   I cut a rectangle portion of this housing for the Computer Control module.  The DEC drive is attached to a 3/4" X 1/8" X 7" strip of Aluminum with a wood block and blue electrical tape.  The OTA is attached to the CG5 via a homemade dovetail bar made from scrap oak and aluminum.  My neighbor owns a machine shop, and machined me two brass adapters as specified Chris Erickson's retrofitting guide.

 

Many thanks to Yahoo Roboscope group.  Especially Joe Bauer and Chris Erickson for their designs.

DEC Drive and Oak Dovetail

RA Drive and Computer Control on plastic housing

Hand Controller attached to tripod via Velcro

 

 

Click image for larger picture

1-Feb-2005

First Light with new mount:  Poor seeing conditions   (shooting over the top of my house), plus my scope is out of collimation slightly from the retrofit work.  I was really just wanting to see how the mount performed. 

I didn't try any Goto's, but the tracking was excellent.  I use to be happy if I could keep Saturn on the Toucam chip for 1-2 minutes without having manually recenter.  I was able to go 10 minutes or so without having to touch the hand controller.  This was by eyeballing Polaris thru the hole in my RA axis.  I don't have a polar alignment scope.  The mount is also much more stable than my original Celestron Fork mount on a heavy-duty tripod.  Dampening times are 1 second or less.  All in all, I'm very happy with the results.