Equipment Used

 From June 2011,  Celestron C14 Edge HD, CGEPRO Mount, & Imaging Source DBK21AU04 camera with 2.5 X Powermate.

JMI electric focuser.

12 " F5.3 Newtonian Reflector  

Installed in the run off roof observatory with new tube.

This tube assembly was replaced in Sept 2009 by a 12" Orion Optics SPX.

Starlight Xpress MX916 CCD Camera

Toucam Pro Webcam

Imaging Source DBK21AU04 camera

 12 " F5.3 Newtonian Reflector  

This is the new scope, all deep sky work will be done with this 

as from May 2002. 

Beacon Hill fork mount, with AWR tracking. 

David Hinds mirror F5.3.

Hope the previous owner does not mind me using his  photograph, 

will take my own soon.

Did I really get this lot in my car ! 

Some early images are now on the 12 " Newtonian pages. 

10 " F15  Maksutov Cassegrain (with 6" Byers RA drive). 

This was used for most Lunar and Planetary work as from April 2002.

 See the 10 " Maksutov pages for example images. 

Hope the previous owner does not mind me 

using his  photograph, will take my own soon.  

This did all fit in the car, but had to leave the concrete block behind ! 

Telescope sold, Autumn 2003.

16 " F4.5 Newtonian Reflector 

This is the scope I used up until March 2002.  As you can see it's not high tech ! 

The  RA worm and wheel were supplied by Beacon Hill Telescopes. The mirror was made by John Owen and re-aluminised late in 2001.  The mount and tube assembly were purchased second hand. In recent years I've been slowly modifying it to make it suitable for CCD imaging. Stepper motors are used to drive both RA and DEC, the RA has a 14" worm and wheel set, with a 81:1 gearbox between the stepper motor and the worm. A small secondary mirror (63 mm)  is used most of the time now allowing better planetary imaging. The scope has recently had a JMI Crayford focuser installed (not shown in this picture).

Televue 5X Powermate used for Planetary imaging, although early images have been taken using barlow lenses / eyepiece projection.

Starlight Xpress MX916 used on this telescope from January 2000, together with  Astroart software for image acquisition and image processing.

Telescope  sold March 2002.