EQ-4 Mount? and 6" Newtonian

[zealous ember]

Have just bought this on Ebay for £23!...
Am interested in getting into astrophotography and wanted to start small
I already have an 8 inch dobsonian at home but from what I understand it's no good for astrophotography pics of deep sky objects and nebulae?
What else will I need to get me going ?
I already have a (very) old DSLR (CANON 300d)
I could probably do with a couple of stepper motors for both axes?

Any help is greatly received 🙂

Jonesy

[crystal pawn]

For that price, I’m expecting it to be bad

[zealous ember]

@crystal pawn tbh I was only interested in the mount! The auction was ending early yesterday morning so stuck a cheeky bid in 🤞

[high mulch]

Defo add a motor to the mount

I feel like a 1000% it's a bird Jones telescope if not your lucky £23 is a decent price

Defo doesnt look like eq3 more like eq2

If you add motors to it it'll definitely be worth it

The legs defo looks like eq3-2

[zealous ember]

@high mulch ok mate, thanks for the advice 👍 I can see how I get on for now and and sort out the motor(s) ... which leads me to my next question... should I drive both axes or just the right assention? TIA Jonesy 🙂

[high mulch]

In my opinion I think both

[proper schooner]

this telescope is actually really good quality from a family owned business

despite being their budget series of telescopes it has way better mirror than your average skywatcher

I feel for imaging this EQ-3 on the other hand might not do you very well

[zealous ember]

@proper schooner at this price I'm gonna give it a go anyway and see what happens. My budget is fairly tight tbh and really can't afford an eq5, so am going for the next step down to see if I can squeeze anything out if it 🤞

[proper schooner]

alright good luck

[zealous ember]

👍

[zealous ember]

Here's a better picture anyway

[brittle scaffold]

ohh that’s the orion optics mount

[zealous ember]

I'm very happy with the scope! Especially at £23! Although I'm having difficulty locating a stepper motor kit which is suitable... so I'm most likely going to have to make up some brackets myself and tap some holes here and there 🤔

And it's definitely not a Bird Jones

[pearl iris]

23 quid... thats blinding, need to give eBay a scout myself 🙌

[zealous ember]

@pearl iris Definitely pal!

[zealous ember]

@brittle scaffold is that a good thing?

Missus is delighted with the new addition to the living room 😆

[pearl iris]

Found a broken Skywatch dob... but for £700 😅 not reached your levels of bargains

[zealous ember]

@pearl iris 😆 timing is everything!

[brittle scaffold]

i used to own one, it isn’t really a eq3 it’s sort of in between a eq3 and eq5 in clutch power

[zealous ember]

@brittle scaffold nice! Don't suppose you managed to convert it to goto by any chance? 😆

[brittle scaffold]

I did lol, using onstep. It was a bit of a challenge for the motors to sit right cause there aren’t any really easy holding places, but i managed to take it the dovetail screws on the dec and a random bolt on the RA

i made the kit myself by the way

[zealous ember]

Sweet! yeah I did notice there's a severe lack of places for the motors to be mounted to

Would you happen to have a parts list by any chance? 🤞😬

[brittle scaffold]

for everything? like the control box aswell as the mounting stuff?

[zealous ember]

@brittle scaffold Pretty much

I was looking at the kits on Ali Express... if they didn't fit I was gonna modify them or make up some brackets

[brittle scaffold]

i’ll have a dig around, it was a while back but i may still have the BOM. The aliexpress thing will also work, and save you a hell of a lot of troubleshooting lol

[zealous ember]

@brittle scaffold Nice one buddy 👍

[brittle scaffold]

yep this will do it

you’ll have to buy some nema 17 brackets from amazon and kinda have to mix and match it a bit

[zealous ember]

👍

Or there's this from the Ukraine on Ebay

This should fit perfectly by the looks of it

[brittle scaffold]

thing is this doesn’t connect to a pc iirc

[zealous ember]

@brittle scaffold Have gone with the onstep 👍

[zealous ember]

The onstep kit arrived yesterday... am at work today so have made use of what's lying about! Have already had to bore out the cogs which fit to the DEC and RIA axes as they were too small. Have also fabricated a couple of brackets this morning too and raided our stores for some cap screws!

[brittle scaffold]

very nice, be sure to make sure your drilling the pulleys are directly in the middle, otherwise it won’t sit right with the belt on

[zealous ember]

Yes, have done mate 👍

The only place I can see to mount to is under the screws which hold the worm gears in place. I'm gonna fit the motors to these brackets then see how they line up... should be pretty straightforward 🤞

[brittle scaffold]

looks good!

[zealous ember]

@brittle scaffold cheers mate, it's getting there! 🙌👍

[kindred cargo]

You may need to update the firmware for precision, the EQ3 kit's firmware was made for the EQ3, but this is a different mount with likely different internals

[zealous ember]

@kindred cargo ok thanks 👍 I'll look into it

[zealous ember]

EQ-4 Mount? and 6" Newtonian

@kindred cargo I'll go through the onstep configurator with the motors connected up on a bench hopefully this weekend 👍
http://o.baheyeldin.com:1111/

[crystal pawn]

Very cool!

[zealous ember]

It lives!!

[brittle scaffold]

hell yea man

[worthy basin]

Nice! Hope it works right!
Why the rubber on the scope btw?

[zealous ember]

@worthy basin me too pal! And it's just a dust cover

[crystal pawn]

Nice!