Digital Rust

For better or for worse my current equipment comprises of the following items;

telescope - Orion Optics 250mm F4.8 Newtonian
Mount - Vixen GP2
Goto / Drive system - Vixen GP2
DSLR - Canon 450D
Video Camera - Imaging Source DMK 21AU04.AS
Laptop - Samsung R - 510


I had a big sigh while typing this up as, the range of equipment available and the price you can pay for it is overwhelming. Telescopes start from a few hundred pounds to many thousands in the prosumer market. A "Losmandy" mount for your scope to perch on can cost upwards of several thousands......and that is just the start of it all

So my equipment fits into the cheap end of the market (both the scope and the mount were under 1000 UKP each) and the laptop and cameras came in at around 1500 UKP. This has however worked out for the best in the longterm, I live in a part of the U.K where light polution is very bad.

My goal now is to take the best pictures possible with the equipment I own in the area I live. If you want to view awesome astro photos I would visit NASA's hubble website at http://www.nasa.gov, however if you want to find out more about taking astrophotographs from your light polluted back yard..................have a click around here and see what you think.

As you can see I have a fairly rudimentary set up. Unfortunately the camera flash has washed out some of the gear but I will replace this with a daytime photo as soon as possible.
I was trying to image M31 at the time of this photo, it is one of the frames you can see on my laptop screen. The "Starbook" drive computer is the blue box hanging off the counterweights and you can just make out my DSLR hanging off the top of the telescope. This has the USB cable draped along the floor connected to the laptop.

The most important equipment here is the coffee cup on the table ( you must not drink beer while imaging ) and a log book for notes on each of the frames you acquire. The towel is to help stop the laptop floating around in the pool of condensation that will form on this glass topped table during the 4 or 5 hours I am out here.

I suspect this is the definition of backyard, amateur astronomy !!!

On the left is a clearer view of my DSLR straped to the focusser. Remember.....set it to manual, ISO 800 - 1600 and bulb setting if available and your mount is behaving. You can see the spotting scope below the DSLR...........try and get this centred as closely to the field of view in your main eyepiece, you will save hours of screwing around when you select a new target.

Have I mentioned before I live in a heavily light polluted area ?

Most of the objects I image are invisible through my telescope eyepiece, as you can imagine this is rather awkward. At least if your spotting scope is set up correctly you should be able to locate a nearby star to your target and be in with a chance

The camera mount half-way down the telecope "OTA in telescope parlance" ( short for Optical Tube Assembly ) is for piggy backing another Camera for "wide field" photos of the sky near your target. This is usefull for meteor shower / milky way pictures and the like

The picture to the right is a screen grab of what a 60 second exposure at ISO 1600 looks like from light polluted skies in the middle of the U.K about 3 miles from the M6 motorway bearing East. The larger "remote Live view" window is what I can physicaly see through the scope................I know, not much but black emptyness. However after 60 seconds at ISO 1600 I get the image in the "quick preview" window. This is why you need to get your goto / polar alignment / drive computer running correctly and have some confidence in it.

In the right hand window pane you can see the settings for this frame were ISO 1600 and I was 40 seconds into the exposure. I have never figured out the "brightness/RGB histogram output yet but over time I intend to do so

RADIO TELESCOPES
Radio astronomy has enabled humans to understand a lot of esoteric stuff about the universe. This is mainly because we can now see previously invisible objects that are way outside the optical E.M spectrum................they are wonderous machines

I visited the Jodrell Bank radio telescope earlier this year. Below are a couple of photo's of this awesome structure and you can read more about it here

Here are some photos of the Very Large Array radio telescope complex I took in New Mexico in October. Located on the San Augustin plains about 50 miles from Socorro are 27 of these antenna.
You can find out more info here at the NRAO website