Mobile Computerized
Automated Observatory
A car-portable Newtonian reflector that finds and tracks the sky on its own.
A ground-up telescope build: aluminium extrusion frame, 4.5‑inch spherical primary mirror, motorised base, and a Raspberry Pi running plate-solving software that holds a target centred through hour-long exposures.
01 Overview
The goal: an instrument capable of serious deep-sky imaging that still fits in a car and can be set up by one person in the dark. The optical tube is a Newtonian reflector on a custom aluminium extrusion frame, chosen for stiffness per kilogram and because the geometry can be re-squared with a hex key instead of rebuilt.
Tracking runs on Pi Finder on a Raspberry Pi, driving motors in the base. Once a target is acquired the mount compensates for the Earth's rotation, which is what makes multi-hour exposures possible without the field smearing into arcs.
Imaging goes through a Sony ZV‑E10: a 6000 × 4000 frame with exposure stacking over long sessions. Tesseract reads instrument displays in the capture pipeline.
- Role
- Design, fabrication, and software
- Optics
- Newtonian reflector, 4.5‑inch spherical primary
- Frame
- Aluminium extrusion, field-serviceable
- Mount
- Motorised base, Raspberry Pi controlled
- Camera
- Sony ZV‑E10, 6000 × 4000, multi-hour exposures
- Stack
- C · Python · Embedded · Tesseract · Linux
- Transport
- Fits in a car, single-person setup