Really far off forum topic.....

After staring at an equatorial mount and a astronomy program which uses a mouse cursor for body identification...it occured to me just now that coupling a mouses ball movement to the telescope mount in some way that corresponds to positioning in elevation and azimuth would be a very neat (and cheap) asset.

It wouldn't be GoTo, but could be "WhereAt"..... :-)

Any creative ideas here?. The ball turns X-Y rollers internally which has potential possibilities. -LarryS.

I also think that it has possibilities, and have wondered when someone would apply that concept to making DSCs for the Portaball line of dobs.

Unfortunately, I don't have the mechanical or computer skills to take on the project, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it in the near future.

Doug
Midway, FL

this idea has come up before, and the portaball guys have been thinking of it for some time. the problem is there are other axes to consider in the system, aside from the two dimensional x/y coordinates.