Meade Star Tracker

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Piet Le Roux South Africa
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Meade Star Tracker

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Post by Piet Le Roux »


I have been looking at a few star tracker camera mounts but with prices between $250 and $500 I had to "put it on the back burner" Then I saw a Meade ETX70, without a controller, on the net selling for about $36 US. The controller is not a problem because I have a spare Autostar so I thought I will give it a go. But it was a lemon: tripod was unusable and all the lenses were removed from the OTA, the seller must have forgotten to mention this! But as the saying goes: when you get lemons make lemonade. After I cleaned the mount inside and got the insects out of the encoders it seem to function fine with my Autostar controller in polar mode and that is what I need to make it a camera tracker. The tripod is also not a problem because I have a old one from a ETX90 that can do polar, all that was left was to modify the OTA to become a camera mount. I did this by making it shorter and mounting a round piece of perspex on the back of it, on this I mounted a Slik ball head camera mount. I Can't wait to try it out!
Startracker 058.JPG
Main Equipment : Tele Vue 27mm Panoptic, 7&13mm Nagler, Big Barlow : 8" Meade LX90ACF with Meade 2.0" Enhanced Diagonal : Camera Fuji XT100
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pakarinen United States of America
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Re: Meade Star Tracker

#2

Post by pakarinen »


Anxious to see what you can do with that rig.
=============================================================================
I drink tea, I read books, I look at stars when I'm not cursing clouds. It's what I do.
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AT50, AT72EDII, ST80, ST102; Scopetech Zero, AZ-GTi, AZ Pronto; Innorel RT90C, Oberwerk 5000; Orion Giantview 15x70s, Vortex 8x42s, Navy surplus 7x50s, Nikon 10x50s
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helicon United States of America
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Re: Meade Star Tracker

#3

Post by helicon »


Nice set-up.
-Michael
Refractors: ES AR152 f/6.5 Achromat on Twilight II, Celestron 102mm XLT f/9.8 on Celestron Heavy Duty Alt Az mount, KOWA 90mm spotting scope
Binoculars: Celestron SkyMaster 15x70, Bushnell 10x50
Eyepieces: Various, GSO Superview, 9mm Plossl, Celestron 25mm Plossl
Camera: ZWO ASI 120
Naked Eye: Two Eyeballs
Latitude: 48.7229° N
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sdbodin United States of America
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Re: Meade Star Tracker

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Post by sdbodin »


Neat idea, I have one of those from an ETX-60 gathering dust. New project!

Thanks,
Steve
Scopes; Meade 16 LX200, AT80LE, plus bunch just sitting around gathering dust
Cameras; Atik 460ex mono, Zwo ASI1600MC-cool, QHY5L-II color and mono
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Piet Le Roux South Africa
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Re: Meade Star Tracker

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Post by Piet Le Roux »


sdbodin wrote: Mon Sep 14, 2020 5:57 pm Neat idea, I have one of those from an ETX-60 gathering dust. New project!

Thanks,
Steve
You would have to get a Autostar 497 controller because the original 494 controller can not do polar. I also noticed that I have to select a ETX70 in the setup, with a ETX60 it keep defaulting back to a Az/Alt mode but with the ETX70 selected it will boot in polar mode and you just have to push "mode" 4 times and its tracking.
Main Equipment : Tele Vue 27mm Panoptic, 7&13mm Nagler, Big Barlow : 8" Meade LX90ACF with Meade 2.0" Enhanced Diagonal : Camera Fuji XT100
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