Starizona offers a pier adapter called the CGEM Pier Adapter kit. Since my Atlas Pro worked just fine with my CGEM tripod adapter, I knew this would work fine with the Atlas. It likely will also work on a few other mounts as well, but I'm not able to verify this.
So far this seems to be working out great for mounting the Atlas Pro to the pier. I may be putting a little thicker top plate on, that the pier adapter is sitting on, but its working fine as it is so I'm in no big hurry to do that.
The other upgrade I've been wanting to do for a while is find a solution for focusing my guide camera on the Starlight Xpress OAG. It uses a thumbscrew and an allen set screw. You loosen these and slide the camera up and down the stalk to focus the camera and then lock these two down. It doesnt slide very smoothly and its quite difficult to get the camera focused.
The OAG uses a male C-mount and I ended up getting this c-mount to t-thread adapter from ScopeStuff and the Baader helical focuser from Adorama. Agena Astro was out of stock on this item at the time but I was able to find one at Adorama for the same price. Both places are a pleasure to do business with.
This worked out great and makes focusing the QHY5L-II guide camera much easier. The focuser has an internal compression ring and three thumbscrews for clamping the camera in place and also includes a focus lock screw.
I'm enjoying the new upgrades as small as they may seem. Anything that makes this hobby a little easier gets a big thumbs up from me! I'm looking forward to the coming weeks here at Little Piney Observatory. I have some bigger plans in the works so stay tuned. :)
