Astrophotography

 

 

My current setup for photography


Orion (UK) CT10 250mm carbon Newton with moonlite dc servo driven motorfocus. The telescope has an air cooled primary mirror, I have fitted a carbon spider for the secondary mirror ( Horst Becker ).
Finderscope : a standard finder to help align everything.  Is fitted with a homemade light to make the crosshairs better visible when it is really dark.  The light is simply an LED, a resistor and a 9V battery all mounted on an old plastic bottle and then with rubberbands to the finder – not high tech. but it works. Additionally I have a selfmade 100mw Laserpointer which I use to get rough alignment.
Mount : Gemini G53F friction drive mount on concrete pilar, aligned to less than 1 arcminute to the polar axis.
Camera : Atik 383L+ mono camera with Atik EFW2 and Baader LRGBHa 2” filters. Chip cooled to 40°C below ambient temperature
Guiding : TS OAG with Atik 16ic cooled camera

Photos taken with this setup ( my best t date )

NGC2024 The Flame Nebula taken with narrowband filters

IC1396 The Elephant's Trunk Nebula taken with narrowband filters