Homemade telescope made with binocular parts

I've taken apart a pair of 50 x 10 binoculars.

I want to use just the objective lens and the eye piece to make a
homemade telescope. I want to place the telescope of a flat board bolted
onto a pole, the board and thus the telescope made rotatable so it can
point in whatever direction I desire. Also, I'll make an arrangement so
I can set the elevation of the telescope to what is desired.

I want some sort of camera or CCD to go behind the eyepiece. Because I
want to see the night sky on my PC only. I just want to set the
direction of the telescope in one direction and let the stars come into
view.

Can anyone tell me what kind of camera or CCD I'll need? And what kind
of attachment or fixture will I need to mount it to the telescope?

Also, can my PC be used to right to image? I presume I'll need to use
the eyepiece. Thanks for any suggestions.

Rich wrote:
I've taken apart a pair of 50 x 10 binoculars.

I want to use just the objective lens and the eye piece to make a
homemade telescope. I want to place the telescope of a flat board
bolted onto a pole, the board and thus the telescope made rotatable
so it can point in whatever direction I desire. Also, I'll make an
arrangement so I can set the elevation of the telescope to what is
desired.
I want some sort of camera or CCD to go behind the eyepiece. Because I
want to see the night sky on my PC only. I just want to set the
direction of the telescope in one direction and let the stars come
into view.

Can anyone tell me what kind of camera or CCD I'll need? And what kind
of attachment or fixture will I need to mount it to the telescope?

Also, can my PC be used to right to image? I presume I'll need to use
the eyepiece. Thanks for any suggestions.

Hi,

I think you are about to discover webcam imaging. Visit QCUIAG for a wealth
of information
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/QCUIAG/

--
Carsten A. Arnholm
http://arnholm.org/
N59.776 E10.457

If you haven't done something like this before, I suggest using a web
cam with minimal alterations to it. This way you could interact with
the web cam using the web cam's software that you would also be
familiar with. If the web cam is attached to a mount that would be
ackward to place near the eyepiece, you may want to take those parts
off the webcam. Put the camera lens close to the eyepiece like you
would with your eye if you looked through it.

If you are savy with electronics, there is a youtube video showing how
to disassemble a webcam to make use of its CCD chip directly. If you
can do this, you can get more control over the chip by making your
home made telescope into a more integrated astronomical camera. If
you have the CCD chip itself, you could put it in the focal plane of
the primary lens and photograph from there. This would allow more
light to get through by avoiding the absorption and reflection with
lenses in your eyepiece and web cam.

The youtube video explaining how to get the CCD chip out of a web cam
is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1auTp6qJcM

The easiest mount to make would be a dobsonian/altazimuth mount. It
offers 2 axis of rotation; vertical and horizontal. That sounds
roughly like your board and pole idea. An equatorial mount is similar
except your pole would be aligned with the Earth's axis. If you
eventually align it with the axis, you could more easily track the
stars as they move across the sky by only moving.

Your 10 by 50 binoculars probably have some aberations so it probably
won't be the clearest at high magnification. The stars may look like
tiny rainbows when you use 100 power or so. The angular resolution is
probably around 5 to 10 arc seconds so it wouldn't be good for looking
at planets(at most 35 arc seconds).

Since the planets and the Moon are essentially the only bright
objects, to see more, you may want to take on the huge challenge of
viewing deep sky objects like galaxies and nebulae. Many galaxies and
nebulae are big enough(around half a degree or larger) to hide the
resolution problems but many times too faint to show up to a human eye
in a 50mm telescope. To get around this, you'd have to take very long
exposures(possibly hours long) and your mount would need to be very
stirdy and include a working clock drive to match the Earth's rotating
speed. To avoid messing up the photos with a blurry, streaky mess
representing each star, the mount would have to work well enough that
it shakes or moves at most a few arc seconds off target through each
exposure.


On Dec 25, 4:41*am, "Rich" wrote:
I've taken apart a pair of 50 x 10 binoculars.

I want to use just the objective lens and the eye piece to make a
homemade telescope. I want to place the telescope of a flat board bolted
onto a pole, the board and thus the telescope made rotatable so it can
point in whatever direction I desire. *Also, I'll make an arrangement so
I can set the elevation of the telescope to what is desired.

I want some sort of camera or CCD to go behind the eyepiece. Because I
want to see the night sky on my PC only. I just want to set the
direction of the telescope in one direction and let the stars come into
view.

Can anyone tell me what kind of camera or CCD I'll need? And what kind
of attachment or fixture will I need to mount it to the telescope?

Also, can my PC be used to right to image? I presume I'll need to use
the eyepiece. Thanks for any suggestions.