My Equipment
(click on any picture for a full size view)
This is the one
that started it all. A Meade model 290 60mm that my wife bought
me for Christmas in 1997. It has been semi-retired. When my sons
get older I will let them use it as a starter scope, I also have
a solar filter for it..
The club that I belong to decided to auction off our old Dobs when we bought new ones, so I now own a 10" f/4.5 Dob. The base was a little short for me and the tube a little bulky, so I re-did them. They are basicly the same just a taller base and the tube is sonotube all the full length without the heavy box at the end.
Since I started this page, I have made several changes to my equipment. Hard to believe isn't it, that someone would upgrade their equipment. The photos below are of some of my old scopes, all since sold. I now use a Celestron C9.25 on an Ultima mount which is housed in my new observatory. I use a Meade DSI-C for imaging. I'll get pictures of them posted someday.
I also have added a Stellarvue AT1010, the same thing as a night hawk, 80mm short tube refractor. This scope can be mounted on top of the C9.25 and used for wide field photography, which I haven't tried yet, or attached to a Meade LXD-55.
Past Scopes and Equipment
My Celestron C-8. A friend had a
friend that bought this scope to see Haleys Comet in 1986, and never used it
again, so I bought the whole setup, including photo equipment for $1000. I changed
the mount from a Super Polaris to Celestron CI-700 with an Advanced Astromaster.
It's shown here on the pier in my old observatory, but I also have the tripod to use when I'm in
the field.
Meade ETX-90, mounted on my C-8 (on the old Ultima mount that
was replaced with the CI-700 above). I finally had a chance to guide with this
setup and am real happy with it. I used it to manually guide the shot of M42.
It works great with my ST-5 camera/auto guider. When not mounted on the C-8,
I mount it on a EQ-1 mount from Scopetronix for quick looks and solar viewing.
I
was getting tired of leaning over the scope to guide my pictures, so I traded
my seldom used ETX-90EC for an SBIG ST-5 CCD camera/autoguider. I attach the
camera to my ETX-90 OTA and a cable plugs into the hand controller jack on the
Ultima mount to guide. Control of the CCD is a Toshiba Tecra Laptop. I may use
the ST-5 for some CCD imaging later, but for now I will stick with film.