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Equipment |
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Telescopes |
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Meade ETX90 |
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My first scope (August, 2003)! A 3.5" (f/13.8) fully computerized Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope with GOTO. Fork mount. (sold in November, 2005) |
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Meade 10" LX200GPS SMT |
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A 10" (f/10) fully computerized Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope (February, 2004) with GOTO and built-in GPS. Fork mount. The scope is mounted on a Milburn Wedge from Bonney Lake Astro Works. (sold in March, 2007) |
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Takahashi FS-102 |
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A 4" (f/8) fluorite apochromatic refractor (November, 2004). (sold in August, 2006) |
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Takahashi FSQ-106 +
EM10 Temma-2 Jr mount |
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A 106mm (f/5) fluorite quadruplet apochromatic refractor (December, 2005). It produces an 80mm image circle with an 8 degree photographic field. I use it with a Takahashi EM10 Temma-2 Jr mount (February, 2005). |
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Imaging equipment |
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SBIG ST-2000XCM |
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A large one-shot color 2 megapixel CCD (1600 x 1200 pixels at 7.4 microns, 11.8 x 8.9 mm) with a built-in CCD autoguider (657 x 495 pixels, 4.9 x 3.7 mm). (September, 2004) (sold in October, 2005) |
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SBIG ST-10XME +
CFW8A Color Filter Wheel |
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A large monochrome 3.2 megapixel CCD (2184 x 1472 pixels at 6.8 microns, 14.9 x 10 mm) with a built-in CCD autoguider (657 x 495 pixels, 4.9 x 3.7 mm). This camera is one of the most sensitive of the market: its peak QE is over 85% at the H-alpha emission line. The color filter wheel is used for tricolor imaging. (October, 2005) (sold in February, 2007) |
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SBIG AO7 Adaptive Optics |
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A high speed tip-tilt mirror for atmospheric correction. Utilizing the second guiding CCD as an imaging sensor the guide star's position is read out at rates up to 40 times a second, and the tip-tilt mirror adjusted to hold the star on the designated pixel for the length of the imaging CCD's exposure. The tip-tilt mirror moves and settles to within 20% of the commanded position in a mere 10 milliseconds, dramatically faster response than any telescope drive is capable of achieving. This is especially true with the Meade LX200GPS at 2500mm focal. (February, 2005) |
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SBIG STL-11000M |
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A 35mm format CCD with 11 million pixels with a built-in CCD autoguider
(657 x 495 pixels, 4.9 x 3.7 mm) and an internal 5 position 2" filter
carousel (February, 2007) |
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Starlight Xpress MX5C |
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A one-shot color CCD (500 x 280 pixels, 4.9 x 3.65 mm) with STAR2000 Autoguiding Interface Kit. (April, 2004) (sold in October, 2005) |
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Philips Toucam Pro |
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A standard webcam with VGA resolution. It's really the best choice for planets and the sun. |
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Meade LPI |
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It has a VGA resolution (640 x 480 pixels) color CMOS chip. Used mainly for moon images. |
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Software |
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Cartes du Ciel / Sky Charts |
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To find stuff in the sky, I use Cartes du Ciel with HST GSC catalogue. It's free and powerful sky-charting software. |
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CCD Soft |
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Imaging software sold with SBIG cameras. Used for controlling the SBIG CCD and autoguiding. |
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Adobe Photoshop CS2 |
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The professional image-editing standard. |
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Registax |
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A free software for alignment, stacking and processing of image. Very powerful tool for processing planets and moon images from AVI files. |