| Up until this point, I had been a visual observer with the Meade
LX200 Telescope. I had only setup the SCT in Altitude-Azimuth (Alt-Az)
mode and had no idea how to setup with an equatorial wedge or how
to
drift align. This would turn out to be one of the most frustrating
things to learn in astrophotography for me. For a long time there
was no one around to ask how to do polar alignment and for nearly
a year I fought with getting good polar alignment, an absolute necessity
in doing astrophotography. The concept seamed easy enough, but it
was the hardware that was the true fight. I was using the Meade
Standard Equatorial Wedge because of budget constraints. The Meade
Standard Wedge for the 8" LX200 is their low priced wedge and
it's true, you get what you pay for. With the standard Wedge,
it's difficult to make small adjustments as it jumps instead of
making smooth movements. Some how in this early time, I was able
to collect some data to produce images good enough to spur me on
to try to do better.
It wasn't long before I got the itch to upgrade to try auto-guiding,
thinking that this would solve the 1 minute limit I was having with
all of my astronomy picture taking runs. I bought a used SBIG
ST-7e CCD camera, it didn't break the 1 minute barrier, it opened
up a whole set of new problems and another learning curve. Auto-guiding
will not take out corrections for polar alignment that is not accurate.
Also backlash within the mount and periodic error needed to be addressed
as well as imaging at f/10 also brings in other difficulties. I
bought focal reducers to widen the field of view and after a year
of experimenting with focal reducers and learning the difficulties
of auto-guiding it was time to upgrade the mount. A heavier, smoother
wedge had to solve some of the problems. I ordered an Ulti-Wedge
from SDAA club member Randy Marsden. Although the wait time was
long for the wedge to be delivered, it was worth the wait. It
provides a stable platform because of it's heavy duty construction
and adjustments are very smooth. If you can get Randy to
put one together for you (he is a busy guy), I highly recommend
this wedge over any of the others that are commercially produced
He can make one for just about any fork mounted SCT, Meade or Celestron.
Before receiving the Ulti-Wedge, I upgraded my telescope to a used
Meade Classic 10" f/6.3 LX200. It was a familiar interface
which meant very little learning curve and at a focal length of
1575mm, the field of view is larger than the 8" f/10 at a focal
length of 2000mm. The larger aperture also offered a 64% increase
of light collecting ability. Even though the scope was larger and
heavier, balancing became a big issue, and I still was not able
to break the 1 minute barrier. I think there were other things going
on with the tracking ability with the 10" Meade and I sent
it to Meade for them to have a look. It was around this same
time period that one of the roll-off observatories became available.
I was lucky enough to be able to purchase a share of that observatory
and I now have my imaging setup permanently mounted within that
building
While the 10" was at Meade, I brought the 8" LX200 back
out and by this time had taken delivery of the Ulti-Wedge. The 8"
always was a pretty good performer and with the new wedge really
shined. Also, while the 10" was being repaired, I bought an
Orion ED 80 as a guide-scope. This has been a great addition. Not
only is it a great guide scope, it takes great pictures also, with
very little color fringing. This is a great scope for the money
and I have to agree with every review I've seen about the Orion
ED80, it's not a true apochromatic refractor, but is a very
well color corrected achrochromatic and considered to be the
poor man's Apo.
With the current setup, I am able to use the ST-7e's guiding chip
 to
auto-guide through one of the scopes and take pictures with a Canon
Digital Rebel through the other. It doesn't matter which camera
is in which telescope, it works equally well one way as the other.
Just recently, I've also been using the imaging chip at the same
time as shooting with the Rebel and auto-guiding I still don't get
great pictures 100% of the time, but successes comes more often
than not. The last 4 years experience and frustration is starting
to pay off. All of the struggle, disappointment and frustration
is all worth it when you're able to get a beautiful astronomy picture. If you want to find out where you can buy a telescope
and imaging setup like mine, visit my vendors page to see where
I shop for Telescopes
and Accessories.
Once everything gets going since everything is computer controlled,
I relax at the eyepiece of my 17.5" f/4.5 AstroSystems Telekit
Truss Tube Dobsonian Telescope. But that's another story.
|
before I was itching to do astrophotography with this telescope. When it
was time to look into buying a camera, the Meade Pictor Series CCD
cameras peaked me interest mainly due to there price. I was soon
talked out of buying the Meade camera due to the following reasons;
1: The hardware (the camera) was mediocre, 2: The software was horrible
and could not be upgraded. For my budget at the time, the salesman
at Oceanside Photo and Telescope pointed me towards the Santa Barbara
Instruments Group (SBIG) ST-237A CCD Camera. The camera came with
two pieces of camera control software, CCDOPPS and CCDSoft and could
be operated with other 3rd party software. IN other words, it was
upgradeable. More on cameras and software later.