u/The_Burning_Face

It's not perfect, but it's mine.

This has been a bit of a passion project of mine. I started last February\march time, wanting to do astrophotography on a budget. My last scope was a powerseeker so obviously I wanted a dobsonian.

The panels and trunnions are fully hand shaped as I don't own power tools, I obviously bought many parts like the mirrors, focuser and az bearing, but beyond those little bits I built the reduction gears myself with belt trains to end up with overall 3.1 arcsecond tracking, which isn't all that, but once I swap from drv8825s to TMC drivers I can go to 1\64 and I'll be dropping to 0.8 with an alt tracking of 0.27 arcsecond.

I'm very pleased with it. Here's some build pictures and a few untracked space pictures to show why I needed tracking.

Still gutted I didn't get a good image of Saturn on the flat pass though.

(Also if it's raining near you, this is why, sorry bout that)

Take that, sun.

Forgive terrible driving, I was mapping the controller on the fly. Good to be back in Rockport.

Made from 2 folded lengths, box\crown stack handles (to be king cobra wrapped for ergo\aesthetics later) folding into a 4 strand round braid. Not the best, but a lot cheaper than an off the shelf jump rope. I'm only using it for the back garden, it ain't a fashion show