The telescope on location

This page is still under construction!

For a photographing session all components are transported to the observation site (some 50 meters from the storage location) and assembled there. This used to involve a lot of up-and-down walking with equipment, cables, a table and of course, carrying the back-breaking pier/mount.
This became a nuisance and was reason (in 2022) to minimize the amount of components and have the System Controller to not only contain the RPi but also power supplies and KVM-peripherals and to construct a cart holding the heavy pier/mount, tracking telescope, counter weights and smaller items. Four trips are enough nowadays, and the setup is up and running in some 30 minutes, while disassembly and storage takes less than 10 minutes.

The images below give an impression of the components, completed setup and observation site (from left to right):
  • All required components are shown here: The telescope, light shield, CCD-camera, system-controller and the cart holding the other items.
  • The cart with pier, mount, counterweight, guider scope and accessoires is shown here. It looks a bit like the contraption constructed by the late Clyde Tombaugh, i.e. his telescope on a lawnmower.
  • The cart is unloaded and the setup ready for fetching and mounting the telescope, the system controller unit, and the CCD-camera and light shield.
  • The cart acts as platform for the System-controller and keyboard/mouse
  • The completed setup (awaiting for the sun to set).
  • Photo of my observation site, in my backyard.
All required
components
The fully
loaded cart
The unloaded cart
The cart as
platform/table
The completed setup
(w.o. light shield)
My backyard and
observation location