Ophiuchus and Serpens in 3D

 3D Constellation post index and instructions

OPHIUCHUS, The Serpent Bearer, and SERPENS, The Serpent

The pattern we see.

The 3D version. Click for a larger image (for phones and small screens).

PARALLEL VIEW:

With labels:

CROSS VIEW:

With labels:

Data:

Object                                    Magnitude     Dist. (light yrs.)

67 Oph                                   4.0                 1200
θ Oph                                     3.3                   440
κ Ser                                       4.1                   380
ζ Oph                                      2.6                   370
δ Ser                                       4.1                   228
λ Oph                                      3.9                   173
Yed Prior (δ Oph)                    2.7                   171
μ Ser                                       3.5                   170
β Ser                                       3.7                   155
ν Oph                                      3.3                   151
Yed Posterior (ε Oph)              3.2                   106
ξ Ser                                        3.5                   105
γ Oph                                       3.8                   103
κ Oph                                       3.2                     92
Sabik (η Oph)                          2.4                     88
72 Oph                                     3.7                     87
Cebalrai (β Oph)                      2.8                     82
Unukalhai (ɑ Ser)                     2.6                     74
ε Ser                                         3.7                     70
η Ser                                         3.2                     61
Rasalhague (ɑ Oph)                 2.1                     49
γ Ser                                         3.8                     37
70 Oph                                      4.2                     17

Sagittarius in 3D

3D Constellation post index and instructions

SAGITTARIUS, The Archer

The pattern we see.

The 3D version. Click for a larger image (for phones and small screens).

PARALLEL VIEW:

With labels:

CROSS VIEW:

With labels:

Data:

Object                Magnitude     Dist. (light yrs.)

μ                             3.8                  1000
π                             2.9                    510
ξ²                            3.5                    370
δ                             2.7                    350
φ                             3.2                    239

Nunki (σ)                2.1                    228

η                             3.1                    146

Kaus Australis (ε)   1.8                    143

ο                             3.8                    142

τ                              3.3                    122

γ                              3.6                      97

Ascella (ζ)               2.6                      88

λ                              2.8                      78

Scorpius in 3D

 3D Constellation post index and instructions

SCORPIUS, The Scorpion

The pattern we see.

The 3D version. Click for a larger image (for phones and small screens).

PARALLEL VIEW:

With labels:

CROSS VIEW:

With labels:

Data:

Object                Magnitude     Dist. (light yrs.)

ι                               3.0            1900

Alniyat (σ)               2.9              700

π                             2.9              590

υ                              2.7             580

Shaula (λ)               1.6              570

Antares (α)             1.1               550

μ¹                            3.0              500

Dschubba (δ)          2.3              490

κ                              2.4              480

τ                              2.8              470

μ²                            3.6              470

ρ                             3.9              470

ω¹                           4.0              470

ν                             4.1              470

Graffias (β)             2.6              400

θ                             1.9              300

ω²                           4.3              291

ζ²                            3.6              132

HR6630                  3.2              126

η                             3.3                74

ε                              2.3               64

A simple dolly for moving a Dobsonian telescope from the garage or shed

Reader Pete suggested I write up something about my dob dolly pictured in the post on making the heavy 10-inch Dobsonian telescope more easily transportable. A dolly or hand truck is useful if you are using a heavy telescope at home or next to where it is stored, versus disassembling it and moving it by hand or transporting it to a dark sky site.

My home is around Bortle 8 (badly light polluted), but I still like to get the 10-inch dob out sometimes because it shows more in a light polluted sky than either my 4.5 inch or my new 6-inch reflector. So rather than heft the base and tube out onto the driveway every time I want to observe, I built a crude but effective flat dolly for it, as detailed below.

Option 1: buy a hand truck

If you don’t want to build a little dolly, you can simply buy a hand truck such as this one at Harbor Freight for somewhere between $50 and $100 and make a few minor modification to carry your Dobsonian. Usually this involves adding a plywood piece to make the toeplate larger (the flat part that the object sits on), adding padding for the scope tube about halfway up the frame, and a strap to hold the scope tube to the hand truck. 

In fact, this is what I am recommending for my brother who has a 6-inch Orion SkyQuest XT6. The scope is not very heavy, 31.5 lbs. total, but to get to a decent park in the city to observe he has to tote it about six blocks (he doesn't drive). Ugh. So a hand truck makes sense for him. Here’s a Cloudy Nights post that might give you some ideas.

Another advantage of a hand truck is that it's very useful around the house (toting bags of yard waste around, moving furniture, etc.).

Option 2: build a flat rolling dolly

Here’s how I built a very simple but also very crude rolling dolly for my 10-inch Dobsonian. Caveat- there are no handles, so I just push and pull on the scope base to move it. Also, mine has front and rear wheels that are different sizes because my driveway is on a three percent slope. This makes it level without any further adjustment so I can use my azimuth circle/digital angle gauge setup to find objects. Using a hand truck in this case would involve too much fuss and potential trouble. If your driveway or path is level or if you don’t need the scope to be level, you can use the same size wheels. If your driveway or path is not paved, or if you have to negotiate steps or anything taller than an inch or so, you are probably better off with a hand truck with 6” or larger wheels.

I had some scrap pieces of 5/8” roof sheathing plywood leftover from a roofing job. (Always see what your workers are throwing away and ask them to save it if you might find it useful.) The base of my 10-inch is a 22” diameter circle, so the dimensions are optimized for that.

I cut a 22” x 26” rectangle from the plywood. The extra 2 inches in front and back provide room to fasten the wheels on without getting in the way of the feet on the scope base or having the bolts sticking out and scraping the base.

I needed the front of the dolly to be 1” higher than the back to compensate for my sloped driveway. I bought a pair of 3” rubber rigid casters and a pair of 2” rubber swivel casters at Harbor Freight. These are 3-5/8” and 2-5/8” high, respectively, which gave me the just about the right adjustment for my sloped driveway. I thought about getting casters with brake levers on them, but these aren't strong enough to hold anything on a slope, just keep it from rolling on a level floor. The casters bolt through the plywood with four bolts each. You’ll need a drill and a pair of wrenches. Make sure you buy bolts that fit the caster holes.

I was able to put the nuts on the bottom of the fixed casters, but the swivel casters were smaller and the threaded bolt ends sticking up would have prevented them from swiveling, so I had to have them sticking up on the upper side of the plywood. It’s not optimal, but that’s what I had to do.

With an azimuth circle on the dob base, I wanted to make it easy to align with the cardinal directions, so I put a mark on the dob ground board that would align with a mark on the dolly to position the base so it would be roughly aligned in azimuth and I would just need to fine tune it each session.

I put the scope base where I would be placing it on the plywood and painted a white circle all the way around on the dolly’s surface to help me align it when plunking it down. 

To keep the base from sliding around, because I would be pushing and pulling it, I glued pieces of wood just outside each dob foot. Normally dobs have three feet, but I found adding three more feet from wood made it more stable on uneven ground, so I have six little pieces of wood glued to the dolly. Just make sure they are shorter than the dob feet so they don’t touch the ground board.

That’s pretty much it. I didn’t even waste paint on it, since it will be spending most of the time in my garage, and paint is often one of the more costly parts of any woodworking project.

So how well does it work?

My only real complaint is that it’s a little hard to maneuver with the two swivel wheels, so I just have to go slowly when pulling/pushing it in and out of the garage. To keep the scope from rolling down into the street, I use a rubber wheel chock from Harbor Freight and a rubber sanding block under each front wheel. If you use something different, make sure it's not going to just slide down the slope. I always stand on the downhill side of the scope when rolling it to and from the driveway.

If you have to roll the scope over a threshold, for example I have a 1” bump from my driveway into the garage, use a piece of baseboard molding a bit longer than the width of the dolly. It has a tapered profile that works nicely as a little ramp. Tip: Save some pieces of any molding you replace. I’ve found multiple uses for this.

Just be aware that you’ll be adding about 4” or so to the height of the eyepiece when observing. Even my adjustable observing chair needs a booster cushion at its highest adjustment for some positions when the scope is on the dolly. I don’t notice any instability or shaking in the views from being on the dolly.

If you have a telescope on a heavy tripod and mount and want to build a dolly, here's an article from BBC Sky at Night that might give you some ideas.

Bonus Tip: If you have a store like Harbor Freight or Northern Tool near you, or can order from one, you can save a lot of money on many items, including tools that you’ll only use occasionally. Better to have the right cheap tool than the wrong high quality tool. I don’t have any affiliation with them, I just like to save money if I can.

I have gone over to the Dark Side

For most of my observing “career,” I have starhopped to objects, later replacing a straight-through finderscope with an azimuth circle on the dob ground board, a digital angle gauge for altitude, an app for the alt-az coordinates of objects, and a right angle/correct image (RACI) finder to find things when my neck just couldn’t take the contortions of a straight-through finder anymore.

Well, that has been working fine, but I decided I needed a downsized scope for when I can’t handle the 10-inch dob. Enter the Sky-Watcher Virtuoso GTi 150 Tabletop Go-To Dobsonian.

Wait...what? Go-to?

Yep, I have gone to the Dark Side.

I did way too much research (although I had a lot of fun doing it), and finally settled on a 6-inch tabletop scope. This is my first new scope in 20 years. I’m an adherent to the philosophy that you really can’t beat aperture to see things better, so after much hemming and hawing I ruled out refractors, at least for now. A 6-inch refractor is huge, heavy, and very expensive. I also ruled out catadioptric scopes due to the total price per inch of aperture and the longer focal lengths with correspondingly narrower fields of view. I also don't want to see things mirror-reversed after looking at them for 30 years in correct orientation (albeit rotated 180 degrees).

I could have gotten a 6 or even 8-inch standard solid tube Dobsonian, but I kept thinking how nice it would be to have tracking, where the telescope’s motor tracks the object you are looking at so you don’t have to keep resetting the telescope as the Earth rotates. This is particularly nice during outreach events where you have a lot of people taking turns looking in the eyepiece. And I wanted to keep the weight and bulk down.

My choice for a downsized scope

I settled on the Sky-Watcher Virtuoso GTi 150P. I figured if I have to give up some aperture, I can at least add go-to and tracking to compensate a bit. This telescope is a member of the "tabletop Dobsonian” family, really a half-fork mount hybrid. Other telescopes of this type include the very popular OneSky from Astronomers Without Borders (see the megathread on Cloudy Nights), the Zhumell Z130, the Orion Starblast, and the Sky-Watcher Heritage, with models available in 114mm (4.5-inch), 130mm (5-inch) and 150mm (6-inch). When in doubt, my advice is to take the larger aperture when possible. The Virtuoso GTi is the only one with a go-to mount at this time.

This particular scope has a roughly 14-inch diameter base, a 16-inch tube when collapsed (27 inches when extended), and weighs a total of 19 lbs., which is 49 lbs. lighter than my 10-inch and a whole lot more compact. Now that's downsizing!

I’ve had the scope out in the Redneck Observatory a few times and to my regular semi-dark site a couple of times. It’s taking a bit of effort to get used to the go-to, which doesn’t always seem to play well with my Android phone, but when it does, it’s pretty cool. I do love the tracking. The phone disconnects every 15 minutes from the scope’s WiFi unless the Synscan app is in the foreground, and I’ve tried every tip from users to no avail. Eh, not a biggie, but still annoying.

After trying to control the scope through Sky Safari Pro with its “tilt to slew” feature and constantly overshooting the target, I decided to just use the Synscan app to center objects after the initial go-to movement done through Sky Safari Pro. I dial the slew speed down to 3 in Synscan and it works pretty well. I have had it sometimes just start slewing off the object on its own, but I'm not sure that isn't user error. I still say it’s a whole lot easier and a lot less frustrating just to push a non-go-to dob around manually to find stuff.

The scope retails for $470 currently when not on sale, which is a pretty good price for a 6-inch mirror, go-to, and tracking. It will even resume tracking if you disengage the motor to manually move it around and then reengage, what they call "Freedom Find," using dual encoders. More important, the optics are good. Most important, it's fun!

As with any inexpensive telescope, there are suggested mods. Of course you’ll need a table to put it on, one that is stable. I built an 18-inch round table out of a scrap of 1/2-inch plywood and three legs from 2x2s screwed into t-nuts so I can break it down flat. A popular solution is the Super Simple 2x4 Tripod for Tabletop Telescopes if you want to stand and observe. If you don't want to build your own, some people recommend this stool or this table from Ikea.

The helical focuser also has some play in it, which has several potential solutions. The one I implemented was putting a 2-inch hose clamp around the top of the focuser housing and tightening just enough to take out the play. I also smeared some lip balm on the threads. I really like it now. I find I can use my Svbony 7-21mm zoom eyepiece no problem without any twisting and shouting. My Baader Hyperion zoom sits all the way down in the focuser to the point where the thumbscrews holding it in rub against the bottom edge of the eyepiece housing, but it works, and it's a better eyepiece than the Svbony (also a lot more expensive). [Edit: I added an O-ring to the barrel of the Hyperion and it no longer scrapes.] I also constructed a light shroud out of black craft foam, because with the upper assembly extended on two truss tubes there is no protection from light and dew, both common in my neck of the woods.

Added a light shroud and 11" high tripod table.

The main problem for me, aside from these quirks, is the red dot finder, which is a very cheap plastic thing mounted very close to the tube circumference. My neck just can’t take straight through finders anymore, but fortunately you only need it for initial alignment, although I have found I sometimes need to align it a couple of times during the night when it decides to go off somewhere on its own instead of where I tell it to go.

To solve the finder issue, I zip-tied a dovetail base for my right angle correct image Svbony SV182 finder that normally lives on my Tasco 4.5-inch to the end of the green dovetail bar. Not optimal placement, but about the only place it can go on this design, and it works without messing up the balance. I just need to get up out of my seat to look through it. In regular star hopping use this would be unacceptable, but for alignment it works okay. I might make a more permanent mounting piece out of wood. There is a 1/4-20 tapped hole there so I wouldn't even need to drill any holes in the tube.

RACI finder mounted on the end of the dovetail
(green) with a zip tie.

I opted for a reflector over a "cat." Kitty was not 
amused, but seems over it.

I’ll post updates as I get more used to this thing of the Dark Side. In the meantime, I have made a mod to my 10-inch manual dob so I can keep using that, too, despite my deteriorating physical condition.

7/19/24 update: If you have an Aldi store nearby, the Easy Home Collapsible Hamper makes a great cover for this scope. Turn it upside down and it's the perfect height. Also keeps its shape.

8/31/24 update: See my post Why does finding things easily have to be so hard? for my issues with the go-to and tracking on this scope.

Making a heavy dob base more manageable: divide and conquer!

The problem

I’ve had my 10-inch solid tube Dobsonian telescope, a Hardin "Deep Space Hunter" made by Guan Sheng Optical (GSO), for 20 years now and it has served me well. In fact, it’s doing better than my own body at this point. I’ve found it harder to load it in and out of the car to get to my darker sky sites. I needed to make it easier.

The solution

I can’t do much about the tube, which weighs about 32 lbs., but a post on Cloudy Nights got the neurons firing in my brain. It showed what one amateur astronomer did with the base of his 12-inch, and I decided to try it on my 10-inch.

The base is made of particle board and weighs about 38 lbs. It's heavy and awkward to get into the car. What if I could split it into two pieces that could be easily reassembled? That’s the idea, and it works! I separated the two round ground boards as one section, actually the round bottom of the rocker box and the ground board, from the rocker box as the other section. These are shown in the pink boxes below. These two sections were originally put together with six long wood screws coming up from underneath the rocker box bottom and into the bottom edges of the rocker box (indicated by the blue arrow below). The pink boxes denote the sections that would be separated:

 

To reassemble the two sections, I bolted two aluminum angles to the inside of each side of the rocker box and fastened them to the round rocker box bottom with four knobs inserted into holes drilled in the horizontal leg of each angle and screwed into t-nuts inserted in the underside of the rocker box bottom.

Inside the rocker box, showing the first angle
fully assembled. The knobs will be used to disassemble
 and reassemble the base.

The outside of the rocker box, showing the
bolts holding the angle. These will stay put.

The whole project took one afternoon, and was only complicated by the fact that I had replaced the original “lazy Susan” azimuth bearing (as shown in the diagram above) with Teflon pads riding on Ebony Star Formica (alas, no longer available). The pads would be in the way of the holes for the knobs, so I had to relocate them closer to the center. Telescope makers will tell you the pads should be located directly over the feet, but I found that in this scope it caused too much friction, so I had located the pads about a third of the way in from the edges, and the azimuth bearing was a lot smoother. Moving them further in would be pushing it, but it actually moves even more smoothly now.

The base is now easy to disassemble and reassemble.

Fully assembled. (The scope sits on a plywood
 dolly I made to make it easy to roll out on the
 driveway when I set up my Redneck Observatory.)

The rocker box now fits around
the tube in the car, saving much-
needed space.

How to do it

If you try this at home, think carefully about where you will put all the holes and measure everything precisely. I had to dodge the holes in the rocker sides from the original wood screws, make sure the knobs didn’t intersect with the circular path of the Teflon pads, avoid a pipe that I installed that holds a swivel table, and leave room to turn the knobs. It was a tight fit, but it works.

The tools and materials I used:

Materials (links to the ones I used):

Two aluminum angles, 1/4” thick, 2” legs (that turned out to be 1-3/4” in reality), and 12” lengths (that were actually 11-5/8”, although they were 1/4" thick, as advertised).

Four male knobs with 1” 1/4-20 threads. (3/4” might have been better- fewer turns needed as long as they reached the threads of the t-nuts.)

Four t-nuts (1/4-20 x 7/16 length); epoxy 

Eight 1-1/2" 1/4-20 bolts, eight 1/4-20 nylon lock nuts, 24 1/4” ID - 3/4” OD flat washers

Tools:

Cordless drill with 1/16”, 1/4”, and 5/16” drill bits, and one 3/4” Forstner bit

Hammer and short thick rusty bolt for hammering in the t-nuts below flush

Two 6” quick-release clamps

Metal file and sandpaper to round the sharp edges of the aluminum angles.

Hand vacuum to keep the aluminum shavings from getting everywhere

Process (for my particular dob, but most should be similar):

Caution! Aluminum angle edges may be extremely sharp. File and sand them before working with them.

Measure and plan where you are going to position the angles and drill all the holes. Do it a few times and set the angles, bolts, and nuts in position to see if there will be any issues before you start drilling. Mark the drill points clearly in pencil on the angles.

Disassemble and then reassemble the rocker box and round rocker box bottom, leaving the round ground board off. You will need to drill in the botton of the round rocker box bottom piece.

Cut the angles if needed (with a metal hacksaw), file any sharp edges that will be exposed, and clamp to the rocker box sides. In my case, there is a front stiffener board that precluded clamping on that end, so I found a piece of wood that fit tightly inside between the two angles that kept the front ends pressed against the sides. Improvise as needed.

I found it easier to do one side first, then the other.

Using a small drill bit, 1/16” or so, drill pilot holes for the two knobs from above, through the angle and the round rocker box bottom. (I did each hole one at a time.) You need to keep these holes small because the Forstner bit you will use to inset the t-nuts on the underside of the rocker box bottom needs to be able to center and it can’t do so with a larger hole drilled through.

Turn the assembly on its side and use the 3/4” Forstner bit to inset the two holes about 1/8”. This ensures that the t-nuts won’t stick out and scrape the ground board surface. I found later that the t-nuts don't hold well in the particle board, only an issue when the base is disassembled, so I epoxied them in.

T-nut epoxied and hammered into place on the
underside of the rocker box bottom. Note the
1/8" recess cut using a 3/4" Forstner bit.

Turn the assembly upright again and drill out the two holes with a 1/4” bit, all the way through.

Turn the assembly on its side again and widen the centers of the t-nut insets with a 5/16” bit.

Hammer a t-nut partially in, then fit the knob from the other side and make sure they meet up properly and there is no binding. I had to use the Forstner bit to widen the sides for several of the holes due to, ahem, user error, but got them all working. Once they line up, coat them with epoxy, being careful not to get any into the threaded tube, and hammer the t-nuts all the way in so they are below the level of the bearing surface.

Turn the assembly upright again and once both knob holes are drilled, screw in the knobs tightly.

With the sides still clamped/braced to the angles, drill small (1/6”) pilot holes horizontally through the angles and the sides from inside (aluminum first) to outside. Widen the holes with a 1/4” bit and insert the bolts from the outside with flat washers and put the nylon lock nuts with flat washers on the inside (aluminum surface).

Before assembling the base to the ground board, a little trick for Teflon bearings is to rub a bar of soap on the bearing surface that contacts the Teflon to give it a little more smoothness.

Once you are done, remove the original wood screws holding the rocker box to the ground boards, assemble the base with the knobs, and test the fully assembled telescope for function.

Now when you have to transport the telescope, you only have four knobs to separate and reassemble the two parts of the base, which is no longer a heavy, ungainly bulk. In fact, you should be able to cradle the rocker box around the bottom of the tube to save space in your vehicle, as in the image above.

What if you want a 10-inch solid tube dob, but don't want to mess with this mod?

All dobs are not created equal. If you are in the market for a lighter weight basic Dobsonian, consider the Orion Sky Quest series. Now that they are apparently made by Jinghua Optical Corporation (JOC), they are even lighter than the Synta-made scopes, and are the lightest mass-produced solid tube basic dobs I have come across. For example, the XT 10 has a 24.2 lb. tube, a 21.5 lb base, for a total of 46 lbs. In contrast, an Apertura AD10, made by Guan Sheng Optical (GSO), has a 34.8 lb. tube, a 31.4 lb. base, for a total of 66.2 lbs., a difference of 20.2 lbs. for the same size aperture! [7-12-24 update: Orion's parent company has closed up, so Orion may not be around much longer. If you're interested, make your decision quickly. 7-19-24 update: Looks like Orion is belly up. Maybe another company will supply the XT10s under a different name??] 

Build your own Redneck Observatory

Redneck /rĕd′nĕk″/ (adj.) - Where there’s a will—and duct tape, a few bungee cords, some plywood, and maybe a few wood screws—there’s a way.

The two enemies of a dark sky are sky glow (a bright glow in the sky resulting from myriad city, town, and industrial lighting) and glare (nearby lights that shine in your eyes and create light trespass). You can’t do much about sky glow other than move somewhere where it’s darker, but you do have some options to deal with glare and light trespass.

Dealing with local lights, your options are:

1. Move somewhere else. Not feasible or even advisable for most people, at least in the short term.

2. Find a better place to observe. Whether it’s down the street or somewhere you need to drive to, it’s usually the best option, and you can often improve both the sky glow and glare situation. But we don’t always want to cart our gear beyond our home environs, and some nights it may only be clear for a short time and we want to take advantage of that right at home. Plus there’s the convenience and safety of being at home.

3. Talk to neighbors about shutting their lights off at night, shielding them, or putting motion sensor lights in. If you have only a couple of offending lights, this might work in the short term, but even cooperative and friendly neighbors will forget or want them on at times. My neighbors clearly believe all-night lights keep crime away and make them feel safe from the dark. I won’t get into the issues with that philosophy, but they have a right to think the way they do and I’m not likely going to change that.

You can also offer to show them stuff in your telescope and approach the lighting issue that way. Recently, I was at a cabin in the mountains, and my brother and I set up our telescopes outside our cabin. We set up before it got dark and it attracted the attention of our neighbors in the other cabins. By the time we were done showing them some objects and chatting about astronomy, we had no lights to worry about the rest of the night.

4. Accept the sky glow and block out the local lights. That’s what I’m talking about here.

At my house, the backyard is mostly blocked by trees and other houses. Therefore, I have to observe in the front yard. All of the neighbors up and down the street have all-night garage and porch lights, usually ten blazing away, none of which are shielded, and only one of which is on a motion sensor. In addition, I have headlights from a busy intersection shining directly at me as cars wait at the red light.

I took control of the situation and built what I call my “Redneck Observatory."

My observatory consists of found objects like my garbage and recycling cans, so I guess I could also call it my “Dada Observatory.” I have a car parked on one side of the driveway, I use frames from the packing of a bathroom sink we had installed, a PVC pipe holder for a target frame I built, some cheap moving blankets, some plastic spring clamps, and a few bungee cords.

The plan was to use stuff I already had sitting around nearby that would be easy to throw together to block out the lights. The car is usually parked there, so I just put a 4x4 piece of wood, left over from stacking flooring, along the edge of the roof with a short extension to hold a small moving blanket in place. The blanket is clamped to the end of an upright frame consisting of the aforementioned bathroom sink packing frame with a height extension made of furring strips (my favorite cheap wood) and old baseboard from the flooring job.

A packing frame leans against the garbage can and is bungeed to it to keep it from falling in the wind. The other packing frame (never throw stuff out that you might be able to use) leans against the recycling can and is likewise bungeed. A big moving blanket is thrown over both frames and clamped in place with spring clamps. The third wall, on the right, is my old PVC target stand with a frame made of furring strips and old baseboard, again with a moving blanket thrown over it and clamped in place.

It takes me 20 minutes to set up and break down if I take my time. Not my casual or optimistic estimate, I actually timed it. If I observe for an hour or more it's worth it to me. Rarely do I observe for a shorter time.

So before you give up, look around the house and see what you have. Maybe you can build your own Redneck Observatory.