Quote:
Originally Posted by batema
Hi,
I suppose there are two reasons for this thread.
- I have just cancelled my third Monday night in a row in which my Yr 11 Physics students were to come and work on their optics assignment. We have been learning about telescopes and how the work and as part of their assignment they were to come to our oval and in groups of 5 they would rotate through 4 stations. Station 1 would have students taling Star trails, Station 2 was to have kids with a 40D piggybacked to a C8 imaging constellations, station 3 had students photographing Eta Carina and Omega Centauri through Skywatcher ED80 guided PHD and station 4 was to image through W/O Flt110 M83 and Centaurus A. After 30 minutes they would rotate so each group would try different skills. Tomorrow we go to the lab and stack and basic process them. NOT HAPPENING. Great weather.
- Given that the school has a 12 "DOB and ED 80 withW/O 66 as guide scope on Heq5 Pro but we are using our own personal camera's can anyone suggest other equipment that may be usefull to purchase as we just got wind that some membners of the P&C are happy with what my mate and I are doing in terms of ASTRONOMY and there may be funds we could apply for if we new what else would benefit our kids.
Thanks
Mark  |
In terms of other equipment that could benifit your kids, why don't you look at an astrovideo system such as a Mallincam HPC camera or Stellacam 3.
These cameras have cooling and can have longer exposure intergrating times so they can reach real deep even in light polluted areas and can also be used on the moon and planets.
While you have them using other "work stations" a group can be viewing lots of objects on a CRT or LCD monitor and discussing what the object is and how it came to be while looking at it in real time. You don't need to polar align just basic tracking will do and they can view lots of things in an hour so this would keep some excitement up for them as these cameras are alot of fun to use and easy set up and pack up.
The stellacam is monochrome and the Mallin cam is in colour although it only shows the brighter objects such as M20 or M42 in colour and faint fuzzies come through in Monochrome.
I use the Mallincam and its a blast.
Here are some examples of the performance of one of these video systems.
The first lot of images are similar to what I get through a 12 inch scope in suburbia in a raw live view on the monitor with no processing, the second lot of images have been stacked and adjusted a little.
http://equatorialplatforms.com/malli....platform.html
They are about 2 grand but you get alot of performance for your money.
Good for large group entertaining and if you want to capture the video images you can use a PC capture card or converter.
Regards Matt.
. Once you have the cash I am sure you will work out what you really need 
. I have been trying to set up an observatory at my school for yonks and so far have submitted about 5 applications for funding to no avail 
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). I do remember it was not overly expensive and I am sure some folks on this site have a better idea then me. Try Merlin66 as I think he is right into spectral analysis.
