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strongmanmike2002 | all galleries >> Observatory and Equipment >> Previous observatories >> Observatory at Sawyers Gully - 2009 to 2011 > Set Up at "Sawyers Gully"
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January 2010

Set Up at "Sawyers Gully"

click on image to see other pictures of Sawyers Gully

Me with my rig at Sawyers Gully not far from Kurri Kurri 45min outside Newcastle.

Packing the car and travelling even this relatively short distance becomes a little
tiresome...an observatory would be nice again!!! :-)

My current set-up consits of:

Astrophysics 152EDF Starfire APO - 6" aperture oil spaced triplet lens using FPL53
centre element, with 4" field flattener for a highly corrected 90mm dia field.

Takahashi NJP german equatorial mount (Total PE < 3") controlled by FS2

Finger Lakes Instrumentation ProLine16803 CCD with colour filterwheel-5-7

Astronomik Type IIc 50mm square low reflection LRGBHaOIIISII filter set

80mm ED refractor for guiding using a Starlightxpress SXV-H9 CCD

Astroart4 for camera control, preprocessing and alignment of frames.

STAR Atlas:PRO for mount control

Astro-Handy Light ring for flats

For images taken using this setup see:

http://www.pbase.com/strongmanmike2002/recent_images


other sizes: small medium large original auto
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john Baxter 12-Jan-2011 17:40
Great images, sharp stars, dark sky. I appreciated your comment about dragging everything out of town to observe.

In the 1990’s I ferried equipment out and back; hours polar aligning, not dropping anything… before I was ready to "click". This was back when CCDs just went commercial. I imaged with hypered Kodak 2415 film, guiding with an SBIG ST-4, a tiny, tiny sensor by today's instruments. Moved up with an imaging ST-7 (integral guiding CCD) before I quit.

Hope you get something permanent, just drive out, open the roof, hit the On button, start guiding and imaging.

How do you get away with the soft ground underneath the support feet ?

jb
Guest 03-Oct-2008 14:05
enjoyed your gallery, Mike!...strongman astronomer...interesting combination :-) take care man