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My Telescopes

My Main Telescope - C14 and Paramount ME

My new Paramount MyT and 8-inch Ritchey-Chretien Telescope

MyT Hand Controller

My Meade 12 inch SCT on a CGEM (Classic) Mount

My 4 inch Meade Refractor with Sky Watcher Guidescope and ZWO camera on a CGEM (Classic) Mount

Skywatcher Star Adventurer Mount with Canon 40D

 

My Solar setup using a DSLR and Mylar Filter on my ETX90

DSLR attached to ETX90. LiveView image of 2015 partial eclipse on Canon 40D

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About the Site

 I try to log my observing and related activities in a regular blog - sometimes there will be a delay but I usually catch up. An index of all my blogs is on the main menu at the top of the page with daily, weekly or monthly views. My Twitter feed is below. I am also interested in photograping wildlife when I can and there is a menu option above to look at some of my images. I try to keep the news feeds from relevant astronomical sources up to date and you will need to scroll down to find these.

The Celestron 14 is mounted on a Paramount ME that I have been using for about 10 years now - you can see that it is mounted on a tripod so is a portable set up. I still manage to transport it on my own and set it all up even though I have just turned 70! It will run for hours centering galaxies in the 12 minute field even when tripod mounted.

 

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Sunday
Nov152009

North aligning the camera.

I was taken by surprise last night (14th November) when I discovered that it was clear at 11pm - I should have checked earlier!! However I managed to align the camera properly before the inevitable clouds set in at 1 a.m.

The new external focuser is shown below

 

 

The thumbscrew on the top of the focuser can be loosened to allow the entire focuser and attached camera to rotate to get the camera aligned to have North at the top.

 

 The image above shows the Crayford Focuser attached to the LX200 and to the camera.

The Crayford now takes over the focusing role from the LX200 and so the mirror is clamped as shown in the image below which shows the fully (firmly but not putting any stress on the mirror) tightened spring on the focus lock.

 

 

 

Images were taken to determine the Position Angle - this is the first image of Globular Cluster Herschel - H201-1.

 The plate solution gives a Position Angle of 1.98 degrees.

 

I adjusted the Position Angle once more - took a random image - and solved the plate.

Here are the actual image and "The Sky" solution.

 As you can see the alignment with North is good - as the North arrow is vertical

 

The Plate Solution gives the detail

 

 

The position angle is now 0.31 degrees - this is near enough!!