Sidereal Trading is excited to announce that we are now the Australian dealer for Rainbow Astro. Rainbow Astro is a division of Rainbow Robotics, a professional mechatronics technology company that designs robotic telescope systems. Rainbow Astro have developed a range of high-end telescope mounts featuring innovative technologies that will impress the most discerning astrophotographers.
In addition to advanced robotic telescope mounts, Rainbow Astro make a range of accessories for RC telescopes. Sidereal Trading has receive our first shipment of RSF Secondary Mirror focus kits for 8″ and 10″ RC Telescopes. The RSF Focuser replaces the secondary mirror holder with a Stepper Motor Moving Focuser. This allows the original focuser to be complete removed and replaced with an optional Fixed Focus Adapter that provides threaded couplings to mount the camera to the telescope. The Fixed Focus Adapter eliminates any possibility of camera tilt being introduce by a poorly constructed focuser.
The RSF Secondary Mirror Focuser Kit incudes Hand Controller and an ASCOM driver allowing remote focus via a USB cable connected to a PC.
You can purchase the DIY kit to upgrade your telescope or buy a Sidereal Trading upgraded GSO RC telescope with the focuser preinstalled.
This is an instalment of a tutorial series on how to slave a dome. In this part we look at connecting the dome control software to the dome and mount through the ASCOM Hub. Depending on the connections you can perform the slaving calculations in the dome control software or the ASCOM Hub.
In this second part of the dome slaving series, we discuss connecting your observatory control program directly to the dome and the mount using ASCOM drivers. This is the simplest we to set it up, and allows you to use the observatory control program to do the slaving calculations.
If you have a computerised observatory, you might know about dome slaving, the process of keeping the shutter on the dome right in front of the telescope. Not only is there a lot of mathematics in this, but also it’s a complicated task to set up the different components of your system. This is the first article in a series on different ways to do this.
