Make the telescope part 7 : The mount
How to make a reflector Telescope Part 7: Making the mount for the telescope
We finish off the telescope project by making a mount that the scope sits on
We have finished the optical tube assembly and the telescope is great. It works terrific. But, we can’t just hold it and view the stars! We need some kind of a stable mount that will hold it for us.
So this part of the tutorial I will show you how to make a simple but strong mount out of easily had materials like pvc pipe. And it rotates and moves real easy. This is so you can move it around and point it at different objects anywhere in the sky.
And note that I also have a video showing how to make this mount. That video is at the bottom of this page.
This picture shows the telescope sitting on the mount we make.
Let’s take a look at what we are making in this part of the tutorial. This is the pedestal mount and the yoke.
The pedestal is a piece of 3 inch pvc pipe with three wooden feet attached to the bottom. The yoke is three pieces of wood. The telescope tube sits in the yoke and it spins freely. The telescope is also able to move up and down freely.
One thing to note here is that this kind of telescope mount is called an alt-azimuth mount.This means that it is a simple mount that freely moves in the up and down and the side to side directions.
This type of mount is very easy to operate and it is something often seen on smaller telescopes like this one.
And one remaining thing we will do is attach some mounts to the tube so it can sit in the yoke of the pedestal mount.
This picture shows the two brackets mounted on the telescope tube. Notice how they are not in the center of the tube length. They are closer to the mirror end of the tube. This is because we mount them approximately at the center of the weight of the tube. In the case of this tube the brackets are 19 inches from the mirror end.
Ok, one last picture. This shows the telescope tube assembly mounted to the yoke and pedestal.
This is the last picture. We now have a pretty good idea of how this whole pedestal mount is built. So now we can go ahead and build it!!
