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Sunday, November 20, 2011

Poncet Platform

Because my main interest in astronomy is in photographing the planets, and I am having some success with the dobsonain, I thought I would build a Ponset platform.  I found this device online, and they are not too difficult to make.  Basically, it is a small platform that you sit your dob on which tracks the sky for about an hour or maybe hour and a half.  The design is too complex to do a complete description in a simple blog post, but a nice writeup is here -->  http://homepage.ntlworld.com/molyned/the_equatorial_platform.htm

I dont fully understand all of the math involved, but they have to be designed for your lattitude, there is an Excel spreadsheet file here --> http://members.ziggo.nl/jhm.vangastel/Astronomy/Poncet/platform.xls

I have not yet had the opportunity to test the mount, but the next clear night I will post photos of the results.






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