How to Illuminate your polar scope

[Music] hey everybody welcome back to my channel it's everett here um i want to talk to you about a little hack that i found um i i'm not responsible for this hack uh a shout goes out to alan wallace i believe his name is he's on youtube um he's a uh he's a uh astrophotographer and a photographer over in europe um and uh so the problem i was having where i got this hack from the problem i was having is um my polar scope isn't illuminated so it's what i use to to pull or align i don't have a pull master or anything like that so i don't use sharp cap i don't have an asi air or asi plus or air plus so the polar alignment for me is it's all manual which is fine i have no problem with it but uh my polar alignment scope is a standard scope so it doesn't it doesn't illuminate it's it's a non-illuminated polar scope anyways um i've been having problems because when i'm in the dark and i'm trying to polar line i can't see anything um it's really hard for me to i have to shine a light so i have to put my light over in front of the polar scope so i'm down on my knees and then i gotta reach around to the front of the mount and uh shine a light down the hole that leads to the polar scope so um so that's what i've been doing uh late uh you know since i got the since i got the the mount but um so i saw this uh i saw this uh video and uh this guy alan wallace he was talking about um he was talking about uh you know tricks on how to illuminate your polar scope if you have an illuminated polar scope and he had mentioned getting glow-in-the-dark tape of all things glow-in-the-dark tape and just sticking it on the inside of the uh of the polar hole or the polar scope hole um but um the way my the way my scope is or not my scope my uh my mount the wave amount is there wasn't really a place to put that tape so i tried a couple of different things i took my i actually took the circuit board off to gain access to the inside of the mount to see where the uh the hole for the polar scope is i tried to so i found it it was just right behind the circuit board um and i i tried to stick tape on the inside where where the where the the circuit board was that controls all the electronics and all that and all the motors for the mount um but i couldn't it wasn't sticking it was just it was a really tight area to get into with my hands and all that and uh i just i just couldn't get it to stick anyways i put everything back together and i'm thinking uh you know i just wasted 10 bucks on a roll of glow in the dark tape and then uh and then i rem you know i i i took uh some of the some of the the polar scope apart like i i can actually remove the polar scope but the polar scope actually came apart which uh which i didn't know it did but it it comes i thought it was one piece so i uh i i you know i was fiddling around with it and all of a sudden the the the barrel i guess it started coming loose it started screwing off i'm like holy moly okay this this comes apart so sure enough um it came apart and i'm going to show you here in a minute or how it looks and actually you know what here i'm going to i'm going to put it back together i'm just going to put it back together quickly so you can get a basic understanding of what my polar scope looks like so this is my polar scope so i look through this end and then this end goes into the mount and then it projects up through where the uh the northern celestial pole is so as you can see i don't know if you can make it out but there's do you see the cross hair and then there's like it says polaris there i believe you see a ring i'm sorry about the the shoddy camera work but i mean you get you get the idea there's there's there's polaris in there and there's uh the big dipper um and cassiopeia so there's constellations imprinted on the glass inside the polar scope so when you look through it um if it's illuminated those constellations uh though that that graphic is uh is illuminated so so what i did is i just untwisted it it came apart and this is the barrel i'm talking about so this barrel here i'm just gonna tighten that down a bit because that came it came out a little bit okay so now as you can see there's glass there but there's no glass on this end so what i did is i uh i cut some tape and i just stuck it inside there and it actually stuck pretty good so now um uh where's my uh where's my little headlamp oh here it is okay so now uh what what i'll do is when see if i if i put this back together you won't be able to see unless i put like the the thing oh there okay you see all the constellations there so okay so now what i'll do i'll put it i'll put it back together okay all right make sure that's nice and snug okay so when the polar scope is inside the mount okay this is so cool now the one drawback from this is i hope it's not too bright but the thing is is i think i can tr i can control the amount of light by um just putting it on for a second or two just to get the the the tape illuminated but um because it's it's it's fairly sensitive like it's it's pretty good so just i'm gonna uh i'm gonna charge the tape up with my light okay let's see if i turn this on so see see how okay so then all i do is i just put it on there like that okay you see my the lights coming through the scope okay i'm gonna charge it up i'm gonna charge it up okay and then i'll i'll try and put it up to the camera as best i can so you can see uh okay so then i'll turn this off okay so now check this out see see that so now i don't have to hold a light in front of my mount in order to see these constellations and to be able to make a a a good polar alignment pretty cool eh so that's that's my little that's my little hack um again uh alan wallace i believe his name is um i i got the idea from him uh it blew me away like as soon as i was able to do that now obviously i'm gonna have to go back every once in a while and um and check to make sure that that the tape is still stuck but i got a functioning illuminated polar scope now so that's my uh that's my hack um and if you if you gain some knowledge if you didn't know about that there you go if you're using a polar scope and you're wondering how to illuminate it instead of spending you know 80 90 bucks how however much they are for illuminated polar scope um there you go it's you know a cheap 10 hack and that uh i got an illuminated polar scope um so yeah if if you like this video uh please feel free to give me a like it really helps my channel out um and uh if you like the content so far if you've visited my channel and you like the content uh you know please subscribe that would be great drop some comments down below if uh if you've done this or if you know of this hack uh if uh and just comment in general if you want to start a conversation and uh hope everybody has a great night and clear skies thanks a lot [Music]

Channel: AstroEverett

Views: 6,361

Keywords: polar alignment, polar scope, equatorial mount, hacks, celestron nexstar 8se

Id: uxYmnfVxzug

Length: 9min 59sec (599 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 30 2021