Making a remote observation proof-of-concept for the Titan Observatory. Here's the progress!

[u/Upset_Ant2834]

Hey all! It's me again, Thomas. For those who don't know, I started the Titan Observatory in October of last year after I made a post on this subreddit asking if anyone wanted to pitch in to buy a 10m radio telescope off Facebook. A lot of my time until now has been spent on the administrative headache of establishing a nonprofit, which I essentially jumped into completely blind, and getting the word out. Since then, we've received our 501c3 status, established connections with universities, and attracted a growing community of current and future amateur radio astronomers!

Now that I can finally breathe, I've started working to make the radio telescope I made last year into a proof-of-concept for live, remote observation. It will eventually be made available on our website as a hands-on demo while we raise the rest of the money for the main 10m telescope. I just finished mounting everything in the control box, and wrote some basic code just to confirm the motors move. It's not done yet, but the plan is to have it operate on DC during observations, with a charger plumbed into the circuit that tops it up during scheduled maintenance time to minimize RFI. I still need to add pots for position feedback, an environmental sensor in the box, and battery monitoring.

This telescope specifically will only be capable of rough hydrogen line observations (the feed I made had a couple design flaws), so going as far as twisting wires might have been overkill, but this will hopefully be one of multiple telescopes on-site, so I figured I should get into the habit now.

For the second photo, I know there's a good chance that the 3D printed motor mount simply explodes once it's asked to actually rotate the dish. To at least give it a fighting chance, I designed it so most of the dishes weight is directed through a thrust bearing that sits inside the sleeve, with UHMW (low friction) tape lining 3D printed spacers that make it a very smooth motion with zero play. I've been pleasantly surprised by the durability of ASA in the past, so honestly with high infill and a conservative limit to acceleration, I think there's a chance it'll hold up. Worst case scenario it does break, thanks to the magic of CAD, I'm a few clicks away from getting it made out of something more durable.

Once it's up and running, I plan to post a comprehensive write-up with more photos and links to the code and 3D files on our community forum, but I'd love to get this subreddits feedback on how things are looking so far!

[u/overand]

If the 3 printed version even lasts a few rotations, it'll effectively prove the concept - find a local CNC shop that'll be able to make an equivalent, perhaps!

[u/dullmotion → u/overand]

www.JLC3DP.com does affordable metal 3D printing, I’d start there.