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Hardware

Celestron Schmidt Cassegrain CG-9.25 telescope - 235 mm aperture, 2350 mm focal length (f/10)

EQ-6 mount with Dynostar X3 goto system and ESCAP P530 motors

        Chart of the periodic error.

SAC 8 ccd imager

SAC's filter wheel

Filters:  Parks Optical ND 13, Red #29, Green #56, Blue # 38A

    Orion Skyglow

    Baader UV/IR block

Meade 644 flip mirror

Celestron f/6.3 focal reducer

Meade f/3.3 focal reducer

Celetron 9 x 50 finder, 6 x 30 finder (retired), Telrad finder (I need all the help I can get).  I use the Telrad to find a star I'm to align on.  Use the 9x50 to get it in the eyepiece.  Center it in the eyepiece.   Flip the mirror.  Center it on the CCD.  Align the Dynostar on the star.

Parks Optical Gold Series 3 element 2x barlow

Parks 2 element 2x barlow for stacking barlows to beyond f/40, looking forward to conditions that allow it's use

Scopetronix Maxview 40 eyepiece with built in T-threads for eyepiece projection.   It seems to give the same field of view as prime focus.  The additional glass surfaces decrease brightness.  It also caused stars in one corner to become oblong.   If I take out all the glass in this lens, it would be useful as a 1 1/4" to T-thread adapter.  In addition, it has a variable extention built in.  With the glass still in, though, it's useless for my purposes.

Celestron vibration suppression pads.  A must with the old CG-5.  Haven't bothered using these with my new mount.  My assembled system weighs an estimated 110 lbs.  Afraid of poking a hole right through them.

Celestron dew shield (primarily for glare reduction)

Compaq 2568CL notebook computer

    Wireless 54g allows operation of the notebook from the comfort of the desktop

Folding table

Drummers stool

55 ah 12 volt battery with 800 watt 12dc to 110ac inverter

Sky Atlas 2000 laminated

 

Software

Cartes du Ciel for locating

K3CCDTools for captuing avi's and focusing at 200%

AstroVideo for capturing long exposures

Registax 2 for stacking and tweaking

Photoshop 6 for rgb merging and further tweaking

Deep Space Exporer for roaming

 

Wish List

Filters, filters, filters and some more filters (IR, Ha, Hb, OIII, lpr, color balanced, etc.)

scope.jpg (786416 bytes)

Observing station (backyard).  Notice the live view of Mars on the display.