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Old 18-02-2010, 11:00 AM
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Quark (Trevor)
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Quark's Planetary Imaging Setup

Hi All,

Have put together a set of images and descriptions of my planetary imaging setup.

They are on my website in their own album.

http://trevsastronomy.webs.com/apps/...lbumid=8224792

Hope this is of interest.

Regards
Trevor
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Old 18-02-2010, 04:23 PM
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telecasterguru (Frank)
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Very interesting Trevor. Thanks for the link.

Frank
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Old 18-02-2010, 05:58 PM
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I was looking at your setup last night. I like the way you and Bird have the cooled cold plate with fan assisted air flow. This seems to give sharpness to the imaging. Is the 16" Meade mirror standard?
Noice work Trev
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Old 19-02-2010, 06:19 AM
paulF (Paul)
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Great photos Trevor, actually they are more than great!!!
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Old 19-02-2010, 06:25 AM
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iceman (Mike)
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Excellent setup, Trevor. You've got it running very smoothly by the looks of it.

I love the ToUcam in the finderscope. Ever since I saw Anthony's, I've been meaning to do something similar for over 2 years now. I even have the 6x30 finderscope sitting in the shed waiting for adaptation but just haven't got around to it.
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Old 19-02-2010, 09:49 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by iceman View Post
Excellent setup, Trevor. You've got it running very smoothly by the looks of it.

I love the ToUcam in the finderscope. Ever since I saw Anthony's, I've been meaning to do something similar for over 2 years now. I even have the 6x30 finderscope sitting in the shed waiting for adaptation but just haven't got around to it.
Thanks Mike, yep, Birds idea with the finder has been a great help. I am sure that you must also have had the experience of occasionally losing the target when rotating the filter wheel or by accidentally knocking the scope. Prior to the CCD finder, for me that meant wasting minutes realigning the target. I run the ToUcam with wxAstroCapture and the DMK with IC Capture simultaneously and now if for whatever reason I lose the target I can quickly realign it from the ToUcam capture screen.

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Originally Posted by paulF View Post
Great photos Trevor, actually they are more than great!!!
Thanks very much Paul.
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Old 19-02-2010, 10:09 AM
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Quark (Trevor)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidU View Post
I was looking at your setup last night. I like the way you and Bird have the cooled cold plate with fan assisted air flow. This seems to give sharpness to the imaging. Is the 16" Meade mirror standard?
Noice work Trev
Thanks David, yes my mirror is a standard 16" F4.5 Meade.
When I purchased it about 16 years ago I only wanted the mirror, I was already in the process of building a very heavy GEM for the project. I was told that the only way I could get it was to buy a complete scope as a unit. The cheapest way to do this was to go with the 16" Starfinder DOB.

There were major problems with the primary mirror cell and more critically, the secondary mirror mount. The same design that was used on their smaller scopes was used on the 16". The mass of a 4" flat elliptical secondary was considerably more than its mount could handle which led to an inordinate amount of flex which made it impossible to hold collimation.

I designed and built my own 27 point primary mirror cell and a secondary mirror mount that could cope with the mass involved and really have not looked back.

From the standard of the images that this scope produces it is pretty obvious that the quality of the mirrors is not to bad.

David, on the value of the peltier, I would say to you that amateurs that don't have them, simply have no idea of what really could seeing looks like. On the face of it, that may sound like a pretty obnoxious comment and that is most definitely not my intent. It is just a statement of fact. I probably should add a qualification to the above remarks, this is really only pertinent to truly hi-res planetary imaging, where objects are being imaged at exceptionally long F/L which sort of relates to very high magnification.

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Originally Posted by telecasterguru View Post
Very interesting Trevor. Thanks for the link.

Frank
Thanks Frank.
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Old 19-02-2010, 10:46 AM
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lacad01 (Adam)
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Thanks for that Trevor. I like seeing how people have their various setups. Using the Toucam as a finder is a brilliant idea.
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Old 23-02-2010, 08:34 PM
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Thanks for taking the trouble to educate others Trevor. Fascinating read.
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