Ad Astra Observatory

I love it when a plan comes together.

I picked up a new autoguider over the weekend. I also picked up a second 9×50 finder about 2 weeks ago. I only needed one more piece of gear to do something really kind of cool.

Here’s the new bit.

Sure, it doesn’t look like much. But here are all the parts, pre-assembly…

…and here’s the finished product!

Why oh why would someone want to do this?

Because this is by far the smallest and lightest guidescope around. Seriously. I have finder brackets on every single telescope (two on Pumpkin). Not to mention this guidescope never needs to be focused (no focuser!). This takes guiding to a place where I just mount up the main scope, drop on the guidescope, and go.

Pumpkin, welcome to the land of imaging-only scopes!

All hail Guido (I’ll accept either gwee-doh or guy-doh as pronunciations)! A giant among autoguiders.