18/05/2020 [A Field DeRotatr for Alt Az Telescopes Used fr Astophotogranhy -cylan29@ifield_derotator Wiki - GitHub A Field DeRotator for Alt Az Telescopes Used for Astrophotography Jump to bottom cytan299 edited this page on 5 Apr 2016 - 59 revisions Preface Most telescopes used for astrophotography are equatorially mounted. However, the more popular computer controlled telescopes are alt-az mounted and are usually deemed unsuitable for astrophotography. The reason is that alt-az mounted telescopes have one more degree of freedom that is not corrected because it does not affect visual observations of celestial objects. Unfortunately, by leaving it uncorrected, alt-az telescopes cannot be used for long exposure astrophotography. In order to overcome this flaw in alt-az mounted telescopes, | have designed and built a field derotator that removes this degree of freedom and thus allows alt-az telescopes to become astrophotography platforms. Goal Thave built a fully functional field derotator that consists of both a mechanical derotator and an Arduino based controller for the LX200. All hardware, drawings, schematics, software and documentation are open source with the respective licenses described below. Thope that this device will be useful for astrophotographers who find polar mounts a real pain in the rear to use, and prefer alt-az mounts instead IMPORTANT! Field derotation cannot work without an off-axis guider. If you don't plan on investing in an off-axis guider, don’t bother building this device because field derotation will not work without it. See the document An Analysis Of Field De-rotation For Alt-Az Mounted Telescopes for the explanation, Documents hitpsgttub.conveytan20eld_derotatorwklA-Feld-DeRolatorfor-A-Az-Telescopes-Used fr-Astrophotography ve‘ns/2020 ‘A Field DeRotator for At Az Telescopes Used fr Astrophotography -cytan289iel_derotatr Wiki GitHub Here are the documents that I have written to support the installation and use of the Field DeRotator. Introduction The introduction to the Field DeRotator. Install How to install the derotator to the telescope and camera GUI interface The GU! interface to control the field derotator remotely with a computer. Controller The Controller interface to allow standalone operation of the derotator. Guides for building the field derotator Here's the guides that | have written for building the derotator and the electronics of the controller and driver © Mechanical derotator assembly manual © Controller and driver [build guide] (https//github.com/cytan299/field_derotator/tree/master/howto/controller.pdf) Features of the Field DeRotator Ihave built the field derotator to work as autonomously as possible. Here are some features that | have built into the system © Control of the field derotator with a GUI via WIFI or USB serial, * Control of the field derotator in standalone mode with a controller box. © Dynamic query of the LX200 for the direction it is pointing --- the user does not need to input star coordinates or the latitude of where the telescope is mounted. Of course, the user must have already 2-star aligned the LX200 for this to work :) * Derotation corrections are done automatically after the user presses a single button. * Hardware home position so that the user can always rotate the camera to a known position. * Software rotation limits that can be set by the user. * Derotator can be used to rotate the camera, and thus the off-axis guider, to any arbitrary position to find a good guide star. * Asoftware home position can be defined w.r-t. the hardware home position. * Alllimits and one software home position can be saved in EEPROM on the controller and retrieved at any time. Specifications hitpsgthub.conveytan20eld_derotalorwklA-Field-DeRolaorfor-A-Az-Telescopes-Used-fr-Astrophotography 2818/05/2020 [A Fels DeRotator for Alt Az Telescopes Used fr Astrophotography °cyian29@\field_derotator Wik - GitHub Here are the specifications of the mechanical derotator and the controller. Derotator specifications Parameter Length Breadth Width Back focus Weight Correction step size Controller spe: Part CPU Board WIFI Board LCD Board LX200 comms Driver comms USB Serial comms Value Units 475 inches 3.25 inches 173 inches 1.55 inches 1.14 pounds 0.0597 deg/step cifications Description Arduino MEGA2560 TI.Cc3000 LCD shield + push buttons 9600 baud serial line Comments from end to end optical connector to optical connector includes mounted electronics driver 1 mrad/step Vendor Arduino Adafruit CC3000 WIFI Adafruit RGB LCD shield field rotator module Stepper pulses and Hall interrupt field rotator module Serial control with computer at 115200 onboard Arduino USB baud serial The completed Field DeRotator The controller and the derotator hitpsgttub.conveytan20eld_derotatorwklA-Feld-DeRolatorfor-A-Az-Telescopes-Used fr-Astrophotography 3a18/05/2020 [A Field DeRotator for At Az Telescopes Used fr Astrophotography °cyian29@\field_derotator Wik GitHub The GUI frontend hitpsgttub.conveytan20eld_derotatorwklA-Feld-DeRolatorfor-A-Az-Telescopes-Used fr-Astrophotography 4818/05/2020 [A Fels DeRotator for Alt Az Telescopes Used fr Astrophotography °cyian29@\field_derotator Wik - GitHub File Connect Hardware Setup Help _O serial_@ wifi send Sw cow Results from first light on 27 May 2015 These photos taken on the evening of 27 May 2015 with an exposure time of 480 s of the Hercules cluster with the derotator turned off. | have placed an arrow to a star that is clearly oblong hitpsgttub.conveytan20eld_derotatorwklA-Feld-DeRolatorfor-A-Az-Telescopes-Used fr-Astrophotography sie18/05/2020 [A Field DeRotator for Alt Az Telescopes Used fr Astrophotography °cylan29@\field_derotator Wik GitHub This is the Hercules cluster with the derotator turned on with the same integration time. It is clear that the stars the round! And if you look carefully, the central part of the cluster is also clearer. Success!!!! hitpsgttub.conveytan20eld_derotatorwklA-Feld-DeRolatorfor-A-Az-Telescopes-Used fr-Astrophotography18/05/2020 [A Fielé DeRotator for Alt Az Telescopes Used fr Astrophotography °cyian29@\field_derotator Wik GitHub Acknowledgements I would like to thank D, Johnson and J. Larson for modifying the gears used in this project. The field derotator could not have been built without their help. Publications This project has been published in Issues 309 (April 2016) and 310 (May 2016), titled "A Field DeRotator for Astrophotography by CY. Tan" Parts 1 and 2. Details of the motivation for building the field derotator can be found in Issue 308 and the description of the electronic circuits, and gear ratio calculations can be found in Issue 309, Copyright All the software, documentation, hardware that I have written is copyright 2015 CY. Tan hitpsgttub.conveytan20eld_derotatorwklA-Feld-DeRolatorfor-A-Az-Telescopes-Used fr-Astrophotography 7818/05/2020 [A Field DeRotator for Alt Az Telescopes Used fr Astophotogranhy -cylan29@ifield_derotator Wiki GitHub All software is released under GPLv3 All documentation is released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License or GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 All hardware is released under CERN Hardware Open License v1.2 ¥ Pages Find a Page A Field DeRotator for Alt Az Telescopes Used for Astrophotography Clone this wiki locally hetps: //eithub.con/cytan299/Field derotator.wiki.git hitpsgttub.conveytan20eld_derotatorwklA-Feld-DeRolatorfor-A-Az-Telescopes-Used fr-Astrophotography