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Equipment
Thank you. Yes the award was a bonus but I couldn't go down to Parkes to accept it.
The book by Robert Reeves was released a few weeks ago. He used about 20 of my images so I thought I'd help amateurs get wind of the book. I'm not sure if anyone locally will distribute it. It's quite a niche that the book is filling but is definately worth it. Robert goes into extraordinary detail in his description of techniques. Willman-Bell didn't want to publish in colour which detracts a little from the book since most planetary shots are fairly colourful.
My equipment is a 12 inch f/5.75 Newtonian with a mirror made (in the 1980s) by Mark Suchting. The tube is a fibreglass Parks tube and the mount is a Meade DS-16 german equatorial I bought in 1985 (I threw the tube away long ago and the 16 inch "mirror" is in a cupboard where it belongs - poor quality). I built a drive corrector from scratch which was pretty tough. It can accept autoguiding from a webcam but I rarely bother to do that since the tracking is adequate for planetary imaging. The mirror is badly in need of a new coating though.
My other telescope is a 20 inch which I also built, back in 1994 (some of you may have seen in had you been to Queensland Astrofest in the 90s). I'm currently modifying the optical tube assembly to fit on the DS-16. I'll keep you posted.
The best money I ever spent was on the ToUcam. At $150, it's provided me with months of dependability. Tonight, I tried my new SkyNyx 2.1 (monochrome). Its pretty expensive and has been shown to produce extraordinary images however it is finnicky. It's come late in the year to take any decent pics of the planets. I can't wait for the Moon to reappear in a few days.
Zac
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