Show us your equipment!

[casstony]

The ED80 looks nice Flash but I didn't mind the Tak colours either. You and Lewis may have to open opposing body shops.

[rrussell1962]

Obsession 18 inch F4.5 classic set up waiting for dark and the old Vixen ED80S F9 on GP mount with Skysensor 2000PC

[dannat (Daniel)]

Tony that is good

[casstony]

Thanks Daniel. I did have my eye on the new Evolution mount but there's not much point now - may as well save some money.

[rrussell1962]

Not current equipment, but my first telescope. Sadly the Cassie the cat and telescope are long gone. Picture about 1975 I would say. Thinking back, I don't think anything I have owned since has given me the same sense of joy and wonder that that little 60mm F12 refractor from Dixons did. Once I added a 25mm Ortho and an 8mm Ortho to replace the HM eyepieces it actually gave pretty good images. Maybe there is a lesson to be learned there.

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

I think our first scopes (and cats) have the best memories.

[brian nordstrom (As avatar)]

A few here know of a deal that was done between New Zealand , Belgium and good old OZ , eg me .
This was a long winded affair , but good people allowed this to happen with every one happy .

On to the 80mm Mizar its self, it was a wreck when IK payed for it in OZ dollars off fleabay .

The long story short was I was left with a OTA , mount and tripod in a really sad state , I have since made a CW , grabbed a 30mm finder off IIS , cleaned the objective , etc , etc ,etc .

With an elcheapo 1 1/4 inch diagonal and my eyepieces this f12.5 blew me away !! , no bull this OTA is almost as good as my Tak sky90 ( close ) I cant see any CA on the moon or the bright ( over 1st mag. stars ) it is excellent , .
I only know of one of these here and yes these are special scopes and I will rebuild this one .
One more thing , the mount looks like the cheap chineese eq's but hell no ! this is as good as my Vixen SP .
.
Brian.

[brian nordstrom (As avatar)]

The rest , 1st light , waiting for dark .
For the Holms's out there . ph #4
Brian.

[Dave47tuc (David)]

Well my Stellarvue is finally ready to go

New HEQ5 mount , Denk Powerswitch BV with IVB 2" Diagonal 19mm Pano's & Lunt solar wedge on its way

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Originally Posted by brian nordstrom

A few here know of a deal that was done between New Zealand , Belgium and good old OZ , eg me .
This was a long winded affair , but good people allowed this to happen with every one happy .

On to the 80mm Mizar its self, it was a wreck when IK payed for it in OZ dollars off fleabay .

The long story short was I was left with a OTA , mount and tripod in a really sad state , I have since made a CW , grabbed a 30mm finder off IIS , cleaned the objective , etc , etc ,etc .

With an elcheapo 1 1/4 inch diagonal and my eyepieces this f12.5 blew me away !! , no bull this OTA is almost as good as my Tak sky90 ( close ) I cant see any CA on the moon or the bright ( over 1st mag. stars ) it is excellent , .
I only know of one of these here and yes these are special scopes and I will rebuild this one .
One more thing , the mount looks like the cheap chineese eq's but hell no ! this is as good as my Vixen SP .
.
Brian.

Brian, My first refractor was an 80mm Mizar branded as a Meade. It was a lovely scope and was responsible for turning me into a refractorholic!

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Originally Posted by Dave47tuc

Well my Stellarvue is finally ready to go

New HEQ5 mount , Denk Powerswitch BV with IVB 2" Diagonal 19mm Pano's & Lunt solar wedge on its way

Looks great, David! Stellarvue make superb scopes

[FlashDrive (Poppy)]

Nice WO Scope with Rotolock Focuser.
Has a 3.5" inch Focuser... 4" inches of draw tube travel.
98mm Triplet ....

Flash....

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Nice pick-up Col!

[Stardrifter_WA]

Nice scope Col, with the new RotoLock Adapters too.

I am looking at upgrading my 110 to include the RotoLock, so would like to hear your opinion of them.

Cheers Peter

[omegacrux (David)]

Nice looking bit of kit Col

[griz11 (Dan)]

I wanted to get back into AP but didn't want a bunch of equipment to lug around. Already had a nice DLSR and lenses so I bought a StarLapse. I had a GM-8 before and really liked it so when I learned that Scott had a half mount I didn't hesitate. Didn't like the stability of it on a regular tripod and polar aligning with a video head is not something I wanted to have to deal with. So I bought one of the Astrotrac wedges and their portable pier. Made a quick modification to the Losmandy dovetail so it would bolt up to the wedge and I had a nice little set up for my AP work. Forgot that I'd never really found stuff in the sky much with out a goto system and immediately started scheming on how to get something working with my rig. An encoder is available for the RA axis half of his DSCH kit. But the other axis was a problem. It does have a shaft however so I found a wheel that would fit that with almost the same count as the Losmandy ones. Used the reader from the other encoder in the kit. The additional parts were 35 bucks and if I ever add the other axis I can just use the other encoder in the kit. Waiting on an Argo Navis to complete it. Should be here in a couple of days.


I've had it out 6 times so far. Outside of one adjustment to the worm/gear lash haven't had to touch it. Longest sub so far is 10 minutes I think it will go longer just haven't tried it yet. I suck at processing AP images so I don't do much to them after getting them out of DSS but I'm gradually making headway. This is the last image I've done. Finally getting good signal to noise. Needs more subs and some at a lower exposure to layer in on the blown out area. But for a quick and dirty test shot it came out pretty nice.

Polar alignment is off just a tad. Looks like I'm not going to be able to get away from drift runs with my longer lenses. For anything under 200 though the polar scope does just fine.


Griz

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

Congrats Dan, that looks a great portable AP setup

As you've noticed, once you get to the longer focal lengths more precise polar/drift alignment is a necessary evil

[griz11 (Dan)]

I had a Nexstar 11 dome the whole works about 15 years ago. My health went to ground and I ended up on disability and had to sell all my stuff to keep a roof over my head. I had insurance and all that but it takes them forever to start paying a claim. Couldn't hold out. I was a comet and NEO hunter. I worked with computers in my job and was into automating everything. Tried some DSO imaging but never could get the hang of it. And I bought the Nexstar about a month after they came out and they had problems. Not something a beginner could even hope to solve. I had people from the club come over none of us could get it to work for very long. A buddy I met on a forum bought one about the same time he gave up about a month before I did. I bought a Borg refractor and was saving up for a Fuji Finepix S2 Pro DLSR to use for imaging mounted on the 11inch. But my camera train was too heavy for the focuser on the Borg and my Ioptron wouldn't fit on the Borg. Just had to have that big scope. I had a GM-8 and an 8in SCT. Should have bought a refractor I know that now. But its all water under the bridge I did it right looks like this time and I can get the images that I've always wanted to get lots more learning to look forward too as well.

Griz

[DJT (David)]

Finally got to play with this today. FS60CB on a Teagul patrol. Its a pack and go that will go with a Manfrotto tripod and 410 geared ball head which makes getting drift alignment sorted fairly easily in the field.

loads of fun solar observing today

Solar observing setup

[ariefm71 (Arief)]

A 10" f/4.5 Newtonian on an eq mount and pier.
http://i.imgur.com/NZlTdEg.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ORL6iNZ.jpg

Arief
------
10" f/4.5 Newt, 4.7mm and 11mm ES 82deg.