 |
My Setup
The picture at the left shows my setup ready for use. My main scope is a Meade 12" LX200 GPS. My second scope, an Orion 80mm ED Apo, is mounted on top. I keep the whole set up on a Scope Buggy that allows me to store it in my garage and roll it out when I'm ready to use it. The wooden cabinet, which is attached to a hand truck, contains my monitor, computer and miscellaneous items such as cameras, eyepieces, toolbox, and much more. There is also a table that provides working space, a stool I use when working on the computer and a stepladder, because sometimes the telescope gets into positions and there is no other way to get to the eyepiece.
|
|||
| The picture on the right, shows my
two main cameras. In the smaller scope on top is an Astrovid
StellaCam II video camera. It has a CCD chip which allows it
to stack up to 256 times. This gives a telescope the ability
to see objects seen by scopes twice its size. You can
also make great photographs from the individual frames, but each one has to be
aligned by hand before it can be stacked. This can make for a very long process. An example
of one such photo is the Swan Nebula on page 3
of the photo gallery.
In the large scope, I have a Meade Deep Sky Imager PRO II, which also uses a CCD chip. You set the exposure length and it stacks the pictures automatically. The camera also guides the telescope and aligns the photos. All you do is sit back and watch the picture develop. A good example of a photo taken with this camera is M101 on page1 of the photo gallery. Both of these cameras take black and white pictures, but I can create color photos by using red, green and blue filters. See the photo of M42 on page 1 of the photo gallery.
|
 |
|||
|
|
||||
