April 13 2003 update: Due to, among other things, time constraints and a brand-spanking-new MX7C, this autoguider is pretty much an abandoned project. Which isn’t to say that I won’t give folks a hand if they need it. I have some goodies that may be of help or at least a starting point for this project.

This is page will hopefully help some out there build the CCD Cookbook based autoguider circuit and provide some background on how to connect one to an LX50.

First of all I want to thank a good friend of mine, Michael McNeil over at http://www.caltel.com/~cno [on http://web.archive.org] for all the help and great advice.

This is really his baby as he put the board together for me leaving my limited knowledge of electronics to work out how to connect the thing to my LX50. Even then a good number of e-mails went back and forth reflecting on the pro’s and con’s of 74LS14’s… Sheesh!! :o)

This autoguider is an update of the version available in the CCD Cookbook which is based on the AY-3-1015D chip that is no longer in production and getting harder to find. The guider will work with the CB211 and CB245’s as well as with the old Connectix black and white parallel port quickcams thanks to Martin Niemi’s great autoguider software.

Here’s a link to Marty’s page [on http://web.archive.org]:

http://www.ameritech.net/users/mniemi000/auto.html

To the Cookbook autoguider page:

http://www.wvi.com/~rberry/cookbook/serial1.htm

This is the pinout for the LX50 Autoguider port. The orientation is as if you were looking at the LX50 panel straight on. The best thing to do is just to get a ready made cable that is wired straight through.

You need a 6 pin RJ-12 plug. The pin numbering on these plugs is read from left to right (duh) with the plug held ‘upside down’. That means the little plastic flange that locks the plug is pointed at the ground, the embedded contacts are pointing up and the side the cable goes in is pointing towards you.

Here’s a screen shot from Marty’s program in action. One thing that had me confused the first night out is that if the guide star is too bright the program won’t lock on it. I was using a bright star just to make life easier but I eventually chose a dimmer star and threw my Hartmann mask on the scope for good measure and everything went great from there.

In my case, the calibration routine threw the guide star right off the frame in the Y-axis the first couple of times. Try, try again and start the calibration with the guide star as close to center as possible!

If you’ve enjoyed these tips and are in the market for electronics or photo gear, using these links to buy from TigerDirect or Amazon.com or alternatively using the PayPal Donate button to make a small contribution helps me keep this site going. Thanks!

The very fist thing I noticed after the first night imaging with my CB245 was how badly I had centered the CCD and the cold finger. Objects I wanted to image were not only completely out of the FOV of my illuminated 9mm reticle but also almost out of the FOV on my 26mm Plössl! Finding things was just a completely ludicrous waste of time. After asking around on the CCD list and realizing that nobody had any tips on and easy way to do this I decided to start rubbing my 2 remaining neurons together to see if I could maybe get a spark.

The idea I came up with was pretty simple. If I could get the CCD to see a perfectly centered crosshair I could then move it into the right spot.

Great! Easy! I pulled off the top of the camera head and traced a circle around it. Found and marked center with a compass and then drew a crosshair through it.

I placed the camera head cap on top of the crosshair drawn on paper and made sure the cap was centered in relation to the circle around it.

Now for the hard part: Going in to my mom’s sewing stuff. After a few mumbles and threats I managed to grab a spool of the thicker type white thread that I taped into place in line with the crosshairs.

In the first image you can see the cap with the threads and in the next one everything mounted and ready to go on the scope for testing. I made an aperature mask out of cardboard with about a dime sized hole in it. Fired up Win245 and played with find mode untill I could see something.

The little ball centered in the Meade 9mm illuminated reticule ep’s FOV and then switched for the CB245 and presto! Quick and dirty centering of your ccd in 15mins or your money back! Now if it would only stop raining! ;o)

The power supply and interface are housed in an old external SCSI drive bay. There was plenty of space for everything and I decided to leave the SCSI power supply in (board at the top) to feed the Peltier off of the 5v it provides. I wired everything to the same AC input and switch and also used the SCSI power supply to power a fan, led’s, etc.

Next down you can see a couple of 12v/500ma transformers. I had to opt for this solution because I simply could not track down a 15v/500ma supply here in Portugal. Silly huh? Anyway this setup gives me about 17v which is within spec and so far has been working great.

The bridge and 4700uF capacitors have been glued with a glue gun to the back of the box.At the bottom you can see the interface board and the heat sinks which barely fit.

Here is the closed box. From the left is the connection for the Peltier from the SCSI supply, then the fuse, power led, the signal shield jack, and 2 female DB25 connectors for the camera head and computer… (have to label those!)

Surprisingly I’m getting a very clean image even with everything stuffed into the same box. From what I read on the CB list I was expecting to get of lot of interference from the power supplies sitting next to the interface board. On the first night out I did 2 min integration’s and got very clean images none the less. Lucky me?

For the camera head I didn’t deviate at all from what’s in the CookBook. I tried some wacky ideas that went very badly and quickly decided to stop trying to be a smart ass and follow the instructions provided. For the newbies: Boy are you going to have fun with this part! Little tip: look for 16 pin ribbon cable connectors like the ones used for connecting IDE drives. Long ago the 16 pin ones were used to connect joysticks but I’m sure they’re still pretty easy to find. The plastic connector can be easily trimmed down to fit in the opening on the camera head and epoxied into place. Worked for me!

“First light” was on the 3rd of October, 2000 at 00:56UT with the camera head on the table and a 50mm Canon lens on top of it. I taped a Kodak film box top to the ceiling and hoped for the best…

Check out my CB245 gallery for images taken with this camera:
http://astroturtle.com/imaging/

I’d like to end this by leaving some links for would be CB245’ers:

Richard Berry’s CookBook Home Page
http://www.wvi.com/~rberry/cookbook/cookbook.htm

Win245 CookBook control software by Tybee Evans
http://www.intricate-ms.com

I seriously started to doubt my sanity when the alarm clock went off at 2:45am. I found myself pulling on layer after layer of clothing before dragging my tired carcass outside to join the telescope in the crystal clear 4ºC January weather. The moon looks like countless other full moons I’ve seen before. Maybe a little brighter than usual, but maybe that’s just my imagination.

I was seriously starting to doubt that I’d got the right day, when the show finally started. “Looks like somebody’s taken a bite out of the moon”, I said and smiled to myself. Time to get to those pictures! In between pictures I took occasional looks through my binoculars, but what really fascinated me was the environment.The crisp shadows were slowly dissolving, and the stars were beginning to show! A few times I couldn’t help removing the camera and looking at M42, or a cluster or two. Don’t get much chance for that during a full moon!

Totality finally arrived about 4:30am. Dark red, beautiful. So dark at one point that I had some trouble framing the moon in the camera. Time for a blanket, some coffee and to pop in another roll of film! 10 minuets later, bundled up and sipping from a thermos I crashed on a deck chair to enjoy the show.

I was lucky enough to catch 2 “shooting stars” while I tried to stay awake for the second half. Suddenly, there it was. A sliver of light so bright it made the moon look oval. 5:20am and I know I’m not going to be worth a damn tomorrow, but right now that really doesn’t matter. Back to the camera. I gotta get some pictures for the sleepy heads!

Turtle! 22/01/2000