Making a Dobsonian Equatorial Platform

I have an Orion XT-6 telescope, which I greatly enjoy using to observe the night sky. One of the challenges with the XT-6 is that it is a completely manual telescope. This means that as the Earth rotates, the stars and planets appear to change position in the eyepiece even when the telescope itself is completely stationary. As a result, I can only observe a given target in the night sky for a few seconds or minutes before it moves out of the field of view. Without tracking, I also cannot easily take photographs of what I see, as any movement causes long-exposure astrophotography to blur.

I built this equatorial platform to motorize the telescope and help it track the stars across the night sky. I based my design on several different sources I found online, especially BBC Sky at Night magazine and Kirchdorferweb.

I made CAD models of the platform in Fusion 360, and I precisely cut several of the parts with the help of my school’s CNC machine.

With its drive mechanism fashioned from a 3RPM motor coupled to a length of threaded rod, I have tracked both the moon and the star Vega for several minutes on end —a significant improvement to using a manual telescope. I hope to improve the drive mechanism in the future to be precise enough for high-magnification planetary astrophotography.

Because the equatorial platform elevates the telescope several inches above the ground, it makes using the finderscope slightly uncomfortable for long durations, so I am currently experimenting with alternative finderscopes, as well as building an observing chair.

I have also added an ESP32-based digital setting circle to this telescope, which I may write more about in the future.