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| A few months ago I had a vision. Well, at least a really neat idea. I really needed a portable telescope that I could take anywhere. I took a look at my 8”-LX 200 and all of the gear I would need to set it up: Power supply, tripod, wedge and laptop (if I’m going to use my CCD), dew heaters, and tripod. I have taken it to remote sites a couple of times and it seems to always completely fill the trunk of my full sized car. Checking all of this into the baggage compartment of a commercial airline was going to take a lot of planning, work and expense. Not to mention the problem of getting it to and from various airports. So my vision. Why not a telescope I could fit into a briefcase. To realize this vision all I needed to do was find a telescope that would fit into a briefcase then add a mount and setting circles that would also fit into this briefcase and finally find a way to pack everything into the briefcase so that it would arrive at the destination and still work. You can tell by the title of this article that the practicality of doing all of this forced me to upsize my “briefcase” vision, but I came pretty close. These web pages describe how I generally went about creating my “Suitcase Observatory”. It’s not a step by step construction project, but it does show many of the construction details. However, like any of these build your own projects, expect to adapt the ideas and detailed construction to fit your own needs. | |
