Telescope Reviews: Post a picture of your Assisted Visual Setup.

Hi Kent,

The main scope is a homebuilt fork mounted 12" f/5 Newtonian with drives on RA & DEC plus digital setting circles to Argo Navis and a laptop running Starry Night Pro Plus. it is one in a line of experimental designs, which are a test bed for a fork mounted 16" under construction.

Mounted on the square tube is a varied collection of other scopes, which get changed around from time to time.

I use Moonlite CR-1 Focuser's on several of my scopes, the 12", Meade SN-10, SW 150mm f/8 refractor, Tak Mewlon 210 with a Mathers mod adapter, & a 16" f/4.5 Newtonian under construction, they are all motorised for manual & electronic PC control.

Essentially: on one side is a WO Megrez 80SD (or a Megrez 90 APO) used with a Coronado 40 BF10 H-alpha system or as a guide scope. Next is a Tak FS-102 with home made motorised focuser, used for various- but often for white light solar with a Herschel Solar Wedge. Next is a Sky Watcher 102 f/10 achromatic fitted with a Baader Mark IV Ha-alpha Solar Coronograph, used visually or with either DSLR's, Video or Firewire cams. A 7" LCD monitor takes 2 video finder feeds, wide angle & narrow angle. Switch from wide to narrow.

Main 12" scope always has a camera on it of some sort, I rarely use any of my scopes visually.
The focuser & diagonal are mounted on a sliding plate to allow use of focal reducers to get me down to around f/1.3.
I need to swap to a larger diagonal when doing this.

And the smaller diagonal is used when doing planetary with the Televue 2" 4 x Powermate, racked out away from the mirror.

On the opposite side to balance the whole assembly is either a Tak Mewlon 210, for solar system objects, or a SW 6" F/8 achromat.

There are various computers for image acquisition video & still, plus a Casablanca DVD AVIO PC with a 500GB drive as a dedicated video capture & editor, which I can connect to a PC and export/import various image/video files to make complete movies. With this AVIO, I can do all sorts of video enhancements/effects, speed up a 3-hour eclipse to only 2 minutes and the list is endless.

OK, that is the gear in the 4-metre rotating observatory.

I am building a new smaller obs of my own design, to take my BIG Alhena GEM with a Tak E180ED f/2.8 astrograph, Meade SN-10 and the Tak Mewlon 210. The pier can be raised & lowered to get ow down horizon views when needed.Driven with a Astro FS2 controller, it also has twin high res shaft encoders to connect to the Argo Navis for a push to for quick all sky views for visitors.

Lastly, I have a little EQ6 as my portable mount which has a selection of scopes/cameras etc, ( SW shortened 4" f/5 with Denkmeier bino's & a PST for quick a look see at the sun before opening up the main dome. This sits on our front patio. I am setting it up with EQMOD to drive directly from a laptop and Starry Night pro Plus 6, a much better solution that the V3xx hand paddle. A Star NX-1 GPS (Chris Carson in Canada)slots into the PC and links to EQMOD.

As associate editor for SKY & SPACE Magazine, a lot of my 'spare' time is taken up with it and associated projects.

Clear skies...

--------------------
Shevill Mathers
Southern Cross Observatory-42 South.
Observatories,Scopes & Equipment see:
http://www.apstas.com/astrotas/mathers/smathers.htm
http://picasaweb.google.com/AstroTasmania

Edited by AstroTasmania (12/15/07 07:11 PM)