Scope rig

[gregbradley]

Some idiot left the portable hard disk sitting on top of the computer at my dark site which contained nearly 50 hours of imaging taken over the last nearly 2 weeks.

Oh - hang on - that was me!

So I guess I am going back down to my dark site again this weekend!

In the meantime here is a photo of one setup I used;

http://www.pbase.com/image/107845851

Tak BRC 250, Tak NJP mount, FLI PDF digital focuser, FLI filter wheel, FLI ML8300 camera.

This is my galaxies or close up work imaging machine.

More after next weekend.....

Thanks to those who gave me advice on using a CCD camera to drift align the mount. It worked really really well and was so fast and simple to do.
I also used Startarg (US$19.95) software cross hair overlay which makes it simple as well. I got tracking errors (XY) down to under .1 of a pixel routinely.

9 clear nights in a row, many with extremely excellent seeing, which makes amends for the lousy weather I experienced during the bulk of the 2nd half of last year. Almost all nights were completely cloudless with one or two with a bit of cloud that cleared completely soon after sunset.

Greg.

[atalas]

Sweet rig !

[jase]

A BRC as a galaxy gobbler? You're gagging me Greg! Its almost a wide field scope at ~1260mm FL. I have to say however, that 1000mm to 1700mm is certainly a nice sweet spot. Regardless, nice rig. Now collect that hard drive so we can see some of your work again. ;)

[gregbradley]

It actually isn't too bad for galaxies. They are a bit smaller scale than I would like and the detail isn't as much as the 12.5 inch RCOS but some certainly come out reasonably well.

F5 galaxy imaging. Perhaps I could start a trend hehehe. The small chip compensates for the wide field.

Greg.