Small Refractor Mods: August 25, 2018
August 25, 2018
There were several high-quality 60mm apochromatic refractors that entered the market last year. They were pitched as portable wide-field scopes, and also marketed here in the US for the solar eclipse last summer. Starting around $450 USD, these little refractors, like the William Optics ZenithStar 61 sold out quickly. I didn’t get a chance to purchase one until May of this year.
The ZS61 has a 360mm focal length at f/5.9, synthetic fluorite objective lens--FPL-53, which has some amazing optical properties. It’s a great scope, with a solid focuser. But there’s an easy modification that will make it even better. I found one thing when I added the imaging train--here’s my narrowband setup, with an Atik414EX monochrome CCD, a ZWO filter wheel with 5 filters, hydrogen-alpha, oxygen3, sulfur2, clear, and a near IR 685nm longpass. With the field flattener this ends up around 3.2 pounds or 1.45kg. These scopes--I keep saying these scopes because there are several varieties of the same basic components, a few of them with the same focuser, focal length, and aperture, differing--as far as I can tell--only with the hardware, knobs, lens caps.
Anyway, the first thing you probably want to do with these is strengthen the scope’s connection to the dovetail bar. The stock version comes with this clamshell ring and shoe, and if you’re going to do anything other than some light visual astronomy, you will want to backup the stock ring with another. I found that when I added the camera, filter wheel, and guider, the whole system had a slight flex to it if I lifted or pushed down with the camera. At first I thought it was the focuser and was a bit bummed about that, but then I noticed it was the whole scope moving, and it all relied on this rather slender ring and shoe. The focuser itself is very smooth and very solid. It’s a dual-speed rack-and-pinion type, and so you may want to adjust some of the tension screws depending on the load you’re planning to add--a DSLR or more, but out of the box, this focuser along with FPL-53 glass makes this scope worth considering for your wider-field work.
To remove that flexure in the system, I bought a ZWO 78mm Holder Ring for ASI Cooled Cameras to see if it would work. The tube’s diameter is around 76mm, and with a delrin shim or something similar, the 78mm inside diameter of the ZWO ring worked almost perfectly. The one gap--literally--was with the two shoes of each ring. The stock William Optics one is ¼” (6.35mm) taller than the ZWO ring. Easy solution: I went to my favorite aluminum supplier (you have one, right? See the links below) and bought a set of stock aluminum pieces, 2” x 3” x ¼”, then drilled, and stacked it with the dual ring setup. Now the whole system is perfectly rigid with two strong foundations.
The other advantage of going with the ZWO holder ring are the risers with the threaded holes on the top and bottom. I added one of these SmallRig cheese grater mounting plates on the top--you should always have one or two of these on hand for bolting things together. They’re tough, anodized aluminum, and full of threaded holes of varying sizes. I use these on the ZS61 and my William Optics GT81 to connect the control hardware and power--usually a Raspberry Pi3b and 12v battery pack. What’s nice is I can use a couple hexcap screws to quickly add or remove all devices from one scope to the other.
So, there you have it. An easy way to build more rigidity into a nearly perfect portable wide-field setup. Let me know if you have questions, or a better way to accomplish this. I added some links below for the components I used.
https://www.highpointscientific.com/zwo-78mm-holder-ring-for-asi-cooled-cameras-ringd-78
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019C2ZM8Q
For aluminum: Stoners Tools and Raw Materials
https://www.ebay.com/str/stonerstoolsandrawmaterials
Ebay listing for the 2” x 3” x ¼” aluminum bar stock:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/281291003556
