25th August 2023
The NRT project is always looking for new ways to enhance its outreach capabilities; to keep delivering engaging talks about telescopes and astrophysics and to give people a real sense of how large telescopes operate and collect data. Martha Kruck, a talented amateaur astronomer, approached the NRT team looking for an internship opportunity as part of an undergraduate degree being untertaken at the University of Lancashire.
Martha has already built many impressive telescopes for personal use and this collaboration gave us an opportunity to create a scale model of NRT for outreach purposes. The project had a short duration (just 40 hours) to coincide with Martha's course and the objective was to develop a scaled NRT model (1:20); representative, cost effective and buildable using equipment we already had available to us. The NRT/LT labs have some impressive 3D printing capabilities so this was a good starting point for the main components. The NRT/LT lab has a Prusa MK3 for smaller parts and an Ultimaker S7 for larger, more complex parts. However, the base components required solid single pieces so these were printed at the LJMU engineering faculty workshop on their larger format 3D printers.
The model uses stepper motors to move in azimuth and altitude and is controlled by 3D printer driver board using OnStep firmware and the ASIair module. This allows the model to act like a real observatory; pointing to real objects in space using the correct right ascension and declination co-ordinates.
The complete NRT model
A demo of the model in action can be found HERE. This is a complex project but an effort was made to make it repeatable by others at fairly low cost and with limited 3D printing capability so we hope to share simplified designs with those interested; for example model files, basic components and control method.
The NRT team is incredibly grateful for all Martha's hardwork and dedication. The NRT model is a great success and is already being used as part of our outreach activities.
