My Astronomical Equipment


They say the difference between men and boys is the price of their toys.

Here is my my oldest daughter Heather next to my Astro-Phyiscs 160 EDF refractor on an Orion Atlas EQ-G German Equatorial mount.  For astrophotography purposes this telescope acts as a 1200mm telephoto lens.  The mount moves the telescope precisely as the celestial objects appear to move across the night sky due to the rotation of the Earth.  Eventually I hope to get an Astro-Physics 900 mount to further refine my imaging abilities. Until then this is what I get to work with and make the most of.

My Orion 80mm guidescope refractor is mounted as a guidescope.  Using an unmodified Philips SPC900NC webcam as an autoguider small corrections can be made to the mount as it tracks to keep the guide star perfectly centered during the length of the exposure.  Using this setup guide stars as faint as 9th magnitude can be used.  


Here is my Orion Short Tube 80mm refractor with my 17 month old daughter Jasmine.  Do you think she is going to be a future astronomer?

Canon EOS 350XT modified with Baader filter by Hap Griffin.  This camera is an 8.2 megapixal digital single lens reflex camera that has been modified to be more sensitive to an important frequency of light called Hydrogen Alpha.  Stock Canon EOS cameras have a filter that all but blocks out this important frequency to give more natural looking daylight images.  This camera has had this filter replaced by one that permits a lot more of this red light to pass to the detector making it much better for astrophotography.


Another view of the guidescope mounted on the AP160.  



Here is all of my current miscellaneous astronomy gear.

 
AP Maxbright.

Canon EOS XT 350.  Modified from the stock camera.

Philips SPC900NC webcam.  This does double duty as my planetary camera and my autoguider.

Canon Timer Remote.  With this I can program the camera to take a definable number of exposures at a definable number of minutes or seconds.

Nagler 31mm

Orion Stratus 17mm

TMB 9mm Planetary

Takahashi LE 5mm
 
Orion 13.5mm Illuminated Reticle

Celestron 2x barlow

Green laser finder and bracket.
 
   

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Christopher Vedeler 2007

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