Telescope and Camera Equipment
Telescopes
Meade 10" LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain
Focal Length: f/10 2500mm (f/6.5 and f/5 with Lumicon Giant Easy Guider focal reducer)
Aperture: 254mm
Primary Uses:  Astrophotography, CCD imaging, Piggyback astrophotography, and visual observation.

My primary telescope is a Meade 10" LX200.  I bought this telescope new back in 1996 and have used it from some pretty cold Spokane winter nights to many hot Tucson summer nights. It has been transported from Spokane, to the Grand Canyon, back to Spokane.  It has been to Seattle, Kalispell Montana the Texas Star Party twice and finally after trekking over most of the Western United States, it finally has it's own house (my observatory) in Tucson Arizona. 

When I bought this scope, my primary goal was to do astrophotography.  At the time I was quite tempted to get an apochromatic refractor because of the unsurpassed optical quality. However I just couldn't bring myself to spend $4000 to $5000 for a 5 or 6 inch telescope regardless of the optical quality. The Meade 10" LX200 is a great compromise telescope. It has good optics (at least mine does), it is fairly portable, the tracking and slewing capabilities are very good, the computer controls make it a joy to setup and use.  It does not offer the unsurpassed optical quality of an apochromatic refractor, but it is still plenty good for learning how to master the art of astrophotography. Visually it gives a much brighter image than the smaller aperture refractor at the same power.

I will be ordering an Astrophysics 155 apochromatic refractor and an Astrophysics 1200 GTO mount when the order line open up again (the wait is over 1 year).  This will give me the opportunity to advance to the next level of astrophotography.  But in the mean time I will use my LX200 to the maximum.  

Orion Short Tube Refractor
Focal Length: f/5 400mm
Aperture: 80mm
Primary Uses: Wide field visual observation, some astrophotography.

Before building my observatory, a serious astrophotography session meant that I would drive at least 1 hour to some remote desert location, spend at least 1 hour setting everything up, and usually staying out until dawn. While the autoguider was doing all the work during an exposure with the main scope, there is a lot of time just sitting out in the cold with little to do.  Having a second scope for visual observation is a great way to pass the time while out under dark skies.  I bought the Orion Short Tube refractor because I was suffering from a little refractor envy, but at the time didn't have the money to get a TeleVue Genesis like I really wanted. The $250 Orion Short Tube is certainly a far cry from the quality of the Genesis, but it is very impressive as a visual scope for the money. It is fairly light and takes just seconds to hook it to a tripod and be observing. 

Photographically it is better than I expected given the extremely short focal length and it only having an achromatic lens. Vignetting is a problem when photographing with this scope, but recently I have gotten some decent pictures through it.  It is probably better than many 400mm f/5 telephoto camera lenses and costs a fraction of what a 400mm f/5 camera lens.  Below you can see how I mount my Orion Short Tube to my LX200 for piggy back astrophotography.  The LX200 in this setup is acting as the guide scope and the tracking platform while my OM1 is attached to the Orion Short Tube. Chromatic aberration is pretty bad, and vignetting is severe, but with a careful cropping the images are quite good.

Steward Observatory's 61" f/13.5
Cassegrain Reflector
Focal Length: f/13.5 20,916mm
Aperture: 1550mm
Primary Uses: Very narrow field astrophotography, out of this world visual observing.

This is the  Steward Observatory's 61" f/13.5 Cassegrain Reflector on Mt. Bigelow in the mountains just above Tucson Arizona. I help out with the University of Arizona's Astronomy Camp program that uses this telescope, and so on those wonderful occasions I get to connect my Olympus OM1 and take some shots through this mighty scope. This telescope was designed to take high resolution pictures of the moon for the Apollo Space program back in the 1960's. The polar alignment, tracking and optics on this scope are incredible. It does a fantastic job with small planetary nebula, lunar photography, and shots of the planets. At a focal length of 20,916mm the field of view with a 35mm camera is only a few arc minutes, so it is not the best scope to use for larger objects. But for the planets and the moon, having a 3 arc minute field of view at f/13.5 lets you do exposures of 1/125th or 1/500th of a second on Saturn where a smaller telescope using eyepiece projection to achieve the same image scale would need 4 or 5 seconds.

If you want more information about attending an astronomy camp (They have a kids and an adult camp) click here.

Cameras
Olympus OM1
Film size: 36 x 24 mm
Advantages: Small, light, smooth shutter, fully manual.
Disadvantages: Difficult to focus well for astrophotography.

Olympus OM1 with a Varimagni finder. This is a very good 35mm astrophotography camera. It is small, light, and has a very smooth shutter. It is a fully manual camera, and thus does not rely on a battery for any of it's functions. It has a mirror lock up to help reduce vibration and the ability to change the focus screen. The Varimagni finder makes it possible to magnify the image seen through the camera (which helps with fine focusing) and it also makes it possible to view through the camera at a right angle. This is an extremely nice feature. Focusing this camera for astrophotography has proven to be it's only drawback. Click here to read about focusing with astrophotography.
SBIG ST4
Detector size: 2.64mm x 2.64mm
Advantages: The best autoguider available on the market.
Disadvantages: For autoguiding, none.  For imaging, the detector is small.

I owned the Meade 208XT autoguider and imager for about 2 years.  It worked fine when I used the 208XT with my guidescope where far more guide stars are available to choose from, and the qualtiy of focused stars is sharp and clean,  But when I tried to get it to work with my Lumicon Giant Easy Guider, it was very difficult to get it to lock on to the guide star.  After spending almost 2 years trying to get the bugs worked out of using a guidescope with my LX200, I decided to go back to using off axis.  I had heard so many good things about the SBIG ST4 and after seeing one in action at the Texas Star Party I decided to sell my 208XT and buy a ST4.  The ST4 is a dramatically superior autoguider than the Meade 208XT in just about every way.  It is lighter (at least the part that attaches to the scope), more accurate, can lock on and guide on fainter and fuzzier stars (as is commonly found with off axis images) and has far more control over the auto guiding functions. In fact the ST4 really does work on stars which are barely visible and would be too dim to use for manual guiding with only 5 or 6 second exposures.  The 208XT required a star that was fairly sharp and fairly bright to lock on. The only advantage of the 208XT over the ST4 is that the 208XT had fewer cables.
SBIG ST7E 
Detector size: 6.9mm x 4.6mm
Advantages: VERY sensitive to light.
Disadvantages: Small detector compared to film.  Creating color images is complex.

Pictured here is my ST7E with the dual stage cooling and water assist.  The ST7 has a built in guide chip which makes using this camera extremely easy and simple.  The guide chip is the best feature of the ST7 in my opinion as it makes taking long exposure CCD images so simple.  I have found that a suitable guide star randomly ends up on the guide chip about 90% of the time.  The other 10% of the time it is necessary to either rotate the camera or slew the scope slightly to frame a guide star.  All CCD cameras must be cooled in order to minimize random noise on the chip (it looks like static).  The standard ST7 only comes with a single stage cooler which can cool the CCD chip down about 25C from ambient.  During the heat of the summer here in Tucson, 25C delta doesn't even get the camera to 0C, which is inadequate for quality work.  When I got my camera upgraded to the enhanced Kodak KAF0400 chip I decided to upgrade the cooling of my camera as well.  With the second stage cooler and the water assist (using ambient temperature water) I am able to cool the camera about 40C - 45C from ambient.  This permits high quality work even in the heat of summer.

Comments: ckvedeler@access4less.net

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