Camera/Eyepiece Slide

The field of view of my Cookbook245 when used on my 14.5"f/5 newtonian is only 9 arcminutes high and 12 arcminutes wide. While that makes a nice size for capturing deep sky objects, it is really tough to FIND things with such a small field of view (unless you have a Go-To capability like with Mel Bartel's computer program for a computer controlled alt/az system)

It is really cumbersome to swap back and forth between the camera and an eyepiece when you have to remove one to insert the other. Flip mirrors insert a mirror to deflect light out the side to the eyepiece, but that requires a fair amount of "in-travel" and most newtonians are, in today's pollitically correct vernacular: ""in-travel challenged".

Al Kelly has a "turrett" that was made by Andy Saulietis. It rotates back and forth with the camera lined up in one position, and the eyepiece in the other. It still requires more in-travel, but not nearly as much as a flip mirror.

Click HERE for a sketch of Al Kelly's Turrett

I was fortunate enough to link up with Roy "Dutch" Teagle and collaborated on a slick design for a "slide". The slide allows for positioning the camera and the eyepiece in the "X" direction (along the direction of the slide's motion) and also has two "stages" to provide adjustments for both the camera and the eyepiece in the "Y" direction. The in-travel is the same as for the turrett, but it has a lot more capability for centering the chip exactly in the light cone of the scope than does the turrett, and in addition, the eyepiece can also be adjusted to be concentric with the camera's FOV for very precise alignment on a target using a crosshair eyepiece.

Dutch fabricated the slide for me and did an excellent job!! (Al's turrett is clearly within the average ATM'er's capabilities to fabricate though). The bottom line is I can no longer imagine trying to image without a way to easily swap between an eyepiece and the camera!!! (Thanks again and again and again Dutch!!)

Click HERE for a larger image of the slide

Dutch has also provided some pretty detailed plans for how to build a slide. Click here to check them out at the ATM Page.