![]() ![]() At the end, I’ll give what should be an off-the-shelf solution, though I have not used it myself.įirst, the focus issue – the only reasonable solution is to find a helical focuser, though in the next post I’ll show another possible solution. I’ll give a little bit of the process I went through to come to a usable solution, to help others come up with their own solutions. These are difficult problems to solve, but hopefully the information given here will resolve these issues in a relatively easy fashion. To make the Galileoscope really useful you need to have a better way to focus it, and need to be able to use a diagonal with it, for comfort of viewing. The third installment in David DeLano’s GS-hack-a-thon guest post series. Posted in Cheap telescopes, David DeLano's Galileoscope hacks, DIY, Gear, guest posts, Hacks | 3 Comments » ![]() If you have questions, please post them to the blog comments, and I’ll try to clarify. If you have a Galileoscope kit, I hope that I have inspired you to turn it into a usable scope or finder. ![]() If you are still reading this, I hope you enjoyed the ride. The SCT focuser makes it look even more massive, but it still is a GS at heart.Īnd also to give some comparison, here are, top to bottom, the SCT set, Matt’s set, and the ABS part, so you can see how much focal length each adds. Side by side with Matt’s modded GS you can see that it is about 50mm longer, which is what the F11 objective gives you. As a finder, I had been permanently using a 32mm Plossl, but as a viewing scope I’d likely take along a couple of other EPs to use. It will likely end up as my lightest grab and go as the mount it is attached to in the picture rides on a photo tripod, and both the scope and tripod fit into a bag together. This scope is really too much for a finder, though I did use it while observing at the Salton Sea with Matt. It looks like overkill, but actually helps with the balance. I added a more than necessary red dot finder that I had bought cheap somewhere along the way. ScopeStuff, however, removed the lip on the adapter for a small fee, and this gave me the focal length I desired – I can focus with my glasses on or off! The adapter attaches to the diagonal barrel with a couple of inset hex screws, which works perfectly. It would be zero clearance with an EP but since I was attaching a diagonal, it added 1-2mm. I found a 2″ to 1.25″ adapter at ScopeStuff that was almost zero clearance. I found a prism diagonal with a lower profile EP holder, but was still not quite satisfied. I also found that the tube was butting up against the inside of the 2″ barrel, so I shortened that a bit (and at this point it barely touches, which is the best length to have), but I was still not satisfied. The SCT focuser has a 2″ EP holder on it, and I used the shortest 2″ to 1.25″ adapter I could find, but was still in need of a couple mm in length. I tested this out, and it was almost short enough to focus, but not quite. I found a second one that had a lower outer profile, and it actually nestles inside the focuser barrel so that the 2″ adapter and focuser are mated with no additional length. I had to buy a M-M ring to mate it to the focuser, and the first one I tried didn’t quite work. I had a 2″ adapter with SCT threads from my previous experimenting. ![]() It was far to long to use the original F10 objective, but since I had the F11 objective I decided to give it a try. The SCT focuser ended up to be a lot larger than I had thought it would be. Somewhere along the way in this project I also bought a used SCT focuser off of Cloudy Nights. I also had a spare kit, originally bought for my son, but he lost interest. I had modified my daughter’s GS with this kit, and it worked perfectly well with a Stellarvue diagonal w/helical focuser. This is the ideal solution, but it is likely very difficult to find one at this point. With this longer focal length objective, a diagonal will work in the GS without shortening it. Part of the kit was a new, F11, objective. When the Learning Encounters site ( ) was functional, they carried a diagonal kit, with which you could construct your own diagonal to go with your Gallileoscope. There is actually one other way to solve the Galileoscope focal length issue. To see how David got from the stock GS to this, see the previous posts in this series. But having used it in the field, I can tell you that David’s monster GS is both a potent observing tool and a real pleasure to use. The moment you’ve all been waiting for–I would be shocked if anyone, anywhere, ever, has put this much time, thought, experimentation, and additional gear into their GS. ![]()
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