Primordial Light: TECHNIQUE
It's not only about the toys, but the pleasure of using beautifully made precision instruments is part and parcel of the experience for many amateur astronomers. Amateurs frequently call their toys “instruments” just as the pros do in a vain attempt to make the uninitiated think that they don’t regard them as toys.
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Mechanical Work: How and why I did it...
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Takahashi TOA-150 Refractor
July, 2009: That big boy on the right is my nephew Rory. Holding him up is my new Takahashi TOA-150 refractor. First Light from this telescope is here.
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Takahashi TOA-150 Refractor
September 10, 2009: As I write this the TOA-150 is approaching two months in my possession and it is still waiting for first light in a deep-sky photo. I have, however, been able to make two Solar-System photos through holes in the clouds.
Photographed from the northeast. Counterweight west-ish.
The Way It Used to Be
Full Load! Pass your cursor over the image for equipment identification. The Losmandy mount, which has a rated capacity of 27 kg, is carrying 33 kg as configured above. This mount did a superb job; it is an under-rated piece of equipment among persons who have not owned one. I replaced it with the AstroPhysics 1200GTO that is shown in the next photo and here because the 1200GTO has a rated capacity of approximately 63 kg. 2008 Photo.
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Photo by Leona Illig for MacLife Magazine
This is the observatory as it was configured before I bought the TOA-150 (6-inch) refractor. The orange telescope is a Takahashi “Tak” Epsilon 180ED that I acquired in August, 2007. The small black telescope is my first telescope, a 1982 Questar Duplex. The Epsilon has a focal length of 500mm and a focal ratio of 2.8. It is called a “fast astrograph.” Fast because its focal ratio of 2.8 is relatively fast, and astrograph because it is intended primarily for astrophotography and is not ideally suited to visual observing. The white telescope is a different kind of astrograph; a 106mm ƒ 5 refractor—Tak FSQ-106 ED. At the back of the FSQ is a Finger Lakes Instrumentation (FLI) PDF temperature-compensated focuser and behind the focuser at the lower-right corner of the photo is my SBIG STL-11000M astronomical CCD camera. The SBIG external guide camera is the small black box mounted on the Questar’s axial port. There are other photos of the Questar at work here. Not visible are a Robofocus and a modified Canon 40D digital SLR that are mounted on the Epsilon. Everything is mounted on an Astro-Physics 1200GTO German Equatorial Mount. Previously all of this was mounted on a Losmandy G11 mount, as seen above. The Losmandy is an excellent mount with ample precision for astrophotography, but it is not rated to carry as much weight as it is carrying above. Note that it is all controlled from an Apple Macintosh MacBook Pro. My wife, Leona, made this photo for a three-page article about my use of Macs in amateur astrophotography that MacLife ran their February, 2009, issue.
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Mechanical and Technical Matters:
• Moving a 725 kg / 1600 lb pier? 29 August, 2009
• Removing a Meade OTA from its fork mount
• Modifying the drawtube on a small refractor to support a heavy camera
• Attaching a RoboFocus to a Takahashi FSQ-106ED. 25 April, 2009
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