Great idea here. I did something similar. I used a 6" piece of PVC that I drilled and tapped for 3 (1/4-20 ) screws at each end. I wrapped the laser w6a couple wraps of electrical tape and slid it in. I used a small block of styrofoam and hot glue to mount the laser assembly to the OTA and Bingo!! I saw another amateur astronomer make one of these too. He used the old finder scope mount to hold his. Both of ya'll are geniuses. Kudos to ya. You have a motor drive. I don't. The scope I used is a Bresser Aurora 150mm reflector I purchased from Hobby Lobby for around $80 or $100 or so several years ago.

I just put a laser pointer on my refractor. When pointing straight up it's impossible to twist your body and look through the finder scope. I took out the finder scope and the laser pointer was the same diameter. It fit in the finder mount. It works great!

I bet you could put the pointer inside an empty metal cigar tube and put padding around the pointer to keep it from shifting. It would be neat to be able to remove the pointer so that you could point out stars/constellations while when group viewing and then be able to return it to the tube without it losing alignment. You can also have have a partner stand by pointing the laser at the start you want to see while you're scanning the area with the scope and use that to hone in on the target star. That might actually be a more practical thing to do in case you live in an area with a lot of aircraft flying over head. .That way you can keep a standard finder scope on for nights you don't risk using a laser.

No power regulation in the USA I own several burning class lasers.

nice video, works with red lazer to? i always see green

Your idea with the PVC pipe and adjusting screw is genius level. Just paint the PVC tube black and it will look like something professional that you spent tons of money on.

In Europe are older people so afraid of terrorism that they called the police when I was showing constellations using green laser to friends in a park !

good idea! Grats.

My laser has an OD of 1 inch which is perfect for 1 inch site rings used to mount scopes on rifles. I then fastened a small 2 inch picatinny site rail on the telescope making sure that it was aligned correctly. Then it is a simple fast, easy, sturdy mount for the laser using the site rings to mount the laser. After mounting the laser spotter I accessed the two adjustment ports on the laser and fined tuned the alignment. I was amazed how much easier it was to align my 12 inch Orion Dobsonian onto what I wanted to view. If I stand behind the telescope and turn on the laser it looks just like the laser beam makes a perfectly straight line to the target star. After doing that I got the idea (just to make the telescope look really cool) to mount 4, maybe six, blue lasers at equal distances apart around the telescope. It would be pretty easy to connect all lasers to just one momentary on push switch. After that I am going to work on mounting my old but seldom used Sony Digital 8 camcorder to the eyepiece. Then I will use the ports on the video camera to connect it to my laptop computer and use the laptop as my view screen. Eventually I'll get a nice color all digital camera to replace the camcorder and connect that to the laptop as they are much, much smaller and not nearly as heavy.

awesome!

Mount Your laser on a hollow tube it will work like a red dot viewfinder for a telescope

I research lasers make sure the laser that you buy is a visual laser not a unvisual laser

Bet the beam covers the star?

You need a higher power laser, like 30mw or better. 5mw will not show the beam in a clear dry atmosphere. Higher power lasers are legal to buy, as long as not sold as a pointing device and have to have a lock out mechanism. The Chinese sell them for $10 on sale. Buy the 303 Green Laser. It states 5mw in tbe ads, but really varies from 30 to 60 mw. I have made a laser beam finderscope that does work fine, with the beam very visible always and gives the appearance of reaching the star pointed at, but then decided instead to just make a two asis friction moveable mount for a standard lens scope. One that can be aligned with the telescope very easily. Not like the worthless, junk old fashioned screw adjust and non working ones telescope manufacturers still put on their expensive telescopes.