Telescopes

My first telescope was a Meade 10" Starfinder Newt on an Equatorial Mount. While the mount was very bad, and I spent way to much time and money trying to use it for astrophotography, the telescope itself is of acceptable quality. When mounted on my Losmandy G-11 with some 10" Parallax rings, I have taken some images that have made it into my gallery. One of this scopes biggest drawbacks is the field curvature. I have tried to eliminate that with a Paracorr, but I have found the Paracorr to be too colorful and to leave blue fringes around the brighter stars.

While I don't use this telescope often anymore, it's medium focal length and large aperture make it useful for some of the larger, fainter objects.

My Celestron C11 is my long focal length scope. At f/10, this scope has a 2700mm focal length, and, at these lengths, nothing is easy. Framing and focusing the images are a constant fight, but guiding and periodic error were a major problem when I first used this scope, because the G-11 is a modestly priced mount. One device that made a huge difference in my success at imaging with this scope is the SBIG AO-7. This flip mirror device allows up to 10 guiding corrections a second, and makes my $3,000 mount guide like an $8,000 one.

This scope does not take some of the most aesthetically beautiful pictures in my gallery, but it certainly takes my most technically challenging ones.

At the other end of the spectrum, my Takahashi FS-102 is a joy to use. Tack sharp images that just snap into focus, and short focal lengths of 820mm or 590 mm with the focal reducer, make taking wide field images of some of the sky's showcase objects relatively easy. Once the scope is setup and imaging, I can go inside and run the imaging session through my wireless lan and WinVNC remote control software, because imaging with this scope does not require the constant attention that the heavier, longer focal length scopes require. That is quite a boon in the dead of winter.

With only 4" of aperture, the images are not going to go very deep, but the beautiful images this scope produces are the ones that most impress my friends.

The newest member of crew is the FS-60C. This tiny scope can almost fit in your pocket, and, with the focal reducer in place, has a focal length of only 265 mm. This scope allows me to fit images that require 35mm film on 4" APO, on my CCD.

My first telescope was a Meade 10" Starfinder Newt on an Equatorial Mount. While the mount was very bad, and I spent way to much time and money trying to use it for astrophotography, the telescope itself is of acceptable quality. When mounted on my Losmandy G-11 with some 10" Parallax rings, I have taken some images that have made it into my gallery. One of this scopes biggest drawbacks is the field curvature. I have tried to eliminate that with a Paracorr, but I have found the Paracorr to be too colorful and to leave blue fringes around the brighter stars. While I don't use this telescope often anymore, it's medium focal length and large aperture make it useful for some of the larger, fainter objects.
	My Celestron C11 is my long focal length scope. At f/10, this scope has a 2700mm focal length, and, at these lengths, nothing is easy. Framing and focusing the images are a constant fight, but guiding and periodic error were a major problem when I first used this scope, because the G-11 is a modestly priced mount. One device that made a huge difference in my success at imaging with this scope is the SBIG AO-7. This flip mirror device allows up to 10 guiding corrections a second, and makes my $3,000 mount guide like an $8,000 one. This scope does not take some of the most aesthetically beautiful pictures in my gallery, but it certainly takes my most technically challenging ones.
At the other end of the spectrum, my Takahashi FS-102 is a joy to use. Tack sharp images that just snap into focus, and short focal lengths of 820mm or 590 mm with the focal reducer, make taking wide field images of some of the sky's showcase objects relatively easy. Once the scope is setup and imaging, I can go inside and run the imaging session through my wireless lan and WinVNC remote control software, because imaging with this scope does not require the constant attention that the heavier, longer focal length scopes require. That is quite a boon in the dead of winter. With only 4" of aperture, the images are not going to go very deep, but the beautiful images this scope produces are the ones that most impress my friends.
	The newest member of crew is the FS-60C. This tiny scope can almost fit in your pocket, and, with the focal reducer in place, has a focal length of only 265 mm. This scope allows me to fit images that require 35mm film on 4" APO, on my CCD.