Travelling light - portable counterweights?

[suthers]

I am heading off to New Zealand in a couple of months and thought I'd
use an EQ1 mount as a compact telescope and camera platform. The
supplied counterweight is pretty heavy and it struck me that it would
really great if one could find something designed for travellers such
as a hollow counterweight shell that you filled with sand, dirt or
small pebbles when you got there! Has anyone found a practical
solution to lighten the cabin baggage - e.g. taping a plastic bag of
sand around the shaft?

[Robin Scagell]

We were talking about this at Astrofest but I don't recall hearing of a ready-made solution. The Astrotrak people were thinking of it but I don't believe they had actually got as far as designing something.

In practical terms, the density of rock is about a third that of iron, and wet sand about a quarter. Here is a list of the densities of various materials. If you are just balancing a camera, the weight doesn't need to be anything like as much as for a telescope, so probably it would work.

It would be perfectly feasible to make a half-decent device to balance a camera from a suitable tin, but it would need a fair bit of effort so that it could be clamped to the shaft and could be easily filled. The lash-up system you suggest might just work and all I can suggest is to try it and see. I only have an EQ2 here so anything I devise would probably not work on your EQ1. I assume your EQ1 is motorised otherwise there isn't much point.

Of course what you need is to be able to borrow a NZ counterweight when you get there. Or the whole mount.

Robin