Equipment

I’ve starting putting together a collection of bits ‘n’ pieces and some are better than others so read on:

Below I’ve listed the equipment I have and I’ve tried to include images where these are available.

Mount

Skywatcher, EQ-6 Pro Synscan

Mount Type: German Equatorial.
Tripod: 2in Diameter Stainless Steel Pipe.
Tripod Weight: 7.5Kgs
Tripod Height: 85-147cm.
Positioning Accuracy up to 1 arc minute.
Stepper motors with 1.8° step angle and 64 micro steps driven.
Slewing speed up to 3.4°/sec (800X).
Bought from Rother Valley Optics

I decided not to waste time trying to build a platform for the dobsonian and instead opted to remount my scope on an EQ-6 Mount. I ordered it on the 4th of June, and it arrived on the 6th! The only negative point being that it doesn’t ship with a power supply so I had to order one from Maplin before I could fire it up and check that it worked. I ordered 10″ tube rings and a dovetail plate at the same time, and received a call the next day to say the dovetail was included in the box and they would remove this from my order – thanks Ian.

The mount arrived in 2 large boxes, one containing the tripod and 2×5KG weights, the other containing the mount, dovetail plate, hand-controller and cables. Both boxes are heavy with the mount requiring a little effort to lift, so be warned.My first impressions on opening the mount box was “WOW THAT’s BIG”. I’d been looking around the Net for examples of the EQ-6 Pro but never really got a feel for how big this really is.I had it all unpacked and assembled within half an hour and I’ve never seen one of these before, so it must be easy. After attaching the mount to the tripod the whole assembly becomes quite tricky to move and once the scope is on top you’d need a forklift to move it around. For this reason I would recommend getting your polar alignment done before you add your tube.

Without the power supply I could do no more than gaze in awe at this marvel of precision engineering before dissassembling it and putting it all carefully back into the boxes from which it came. As my wife so eloquently put it “where do you think you going to put that!”.The power supply arrived on the 8th so I fired everthing up to make sure the LEDs glowed and motors whirred before once again putting it all back in the boxes. There is a theory that when you buy a new piece of kit the clouds move over your house for at least two weeks, and this week is no exception. We’ve had clear sunny days and cloudy nights since I placed the order on Monday and it looks like the weather is not set to change for at least another week.

Sunday 10th June: I again put it all together and after reading the manual set about aligning the polar scope using a neighbour’s chimney as a target. It took a good 10 or 15 minutes before I managed to get the cross hairs stationary while I rotated the RA axis. I found the scope wouldn’t balance with the 2×5KG weights provided and bought another 5KG (dumbell weight) from the local supermarket for £4. It has a larger hole than the correct weights but I sandwiched it between the other 2 and everthing seemed fine. My scope is 12.5KGs so I should have guessed that I’d need more weight, but, you live and learn.

Now I need to wait for a clear night to try it out!

Scopes

Sky Watcher, Skyliner 250

Aperture: 250mm (10″)
Focal Length: 1200mm
Mount: Dobsonian
Type: Newtonian

Sky Watcher 114M

Aperture: 114.5mm (4.5″)
Focal Length: 1000mm
Mount: EQ-1
Type: Newtonian

If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have bought the dobsonian mount. It’s a great light catcher and is able to pick up very faint objects visually but if you want to do anything serious with astro-photography then you need a mount that is able to follow your target allowing for long exposures.

Perhaps one day I’ll remount the tube on a pillar with a Equatorial mount but for the time being I’m looking at making an equatorial platform that will add motor control to the dobsonian. This should be a project within my limited capabilities of wood working and electronics so I think I’ll tackle this as soon as I’ve finished the current project.

Cameras

	Atik 16ic Sensor: CCD (ICX424) Resolution: 659×494 Pixel Size: 7.4um x 7.4um Chip size: 5.79mm (H) x 4.89mm (V) Interface: USB 1 Peltier Cooled 16Bit ADC
	Philips SPC900NC Sensor: CCD (ICX098) Resolution: 640×480 Pixel Size: 5.6um x 5.6um Chip size: 4.60mm (H) x 3.97mm (V) Interface: USB 2 “compatible”
	Trust SpaceC@m 380 Sensor: CMOS (OV7620) Resolution: 640×480 Pixel Size: 7.6um x 7.6um Interface: USB 2
	Baxall Ice CM2XUTP/M Sensor: 1/2″ Sony CCD Resolution: 720×576 Pixel Size: 8.6um x 8.3um Interface: Composite Video
	Home Built 1004x Sensor: 1/3″ Sony CCD (ICX255) Resolution: 640×480 Pixel Size: 9.8um x 6.3um Interface: Composite Video
	Fujifilm S9500 Zoom Sensor: 1/1.6 inch Super CCD HR Resolution: 9M Pixel Size: Unknown Interface: USB

Lenses etc

10mm LER bundled with 114M

25mm LER bundled with 114M

10mm Plossl bundled with SW250

25mm Plossl bundled with SW250

17mm Plossl bought of the Internet

2x Barlow, bundled with 114M

3x Barlow, bought from Astronomica

Baader Neodymium Moon & Skyglow Filter

Baader IR/UV Cut Filter

The lenses bundled with the SW250 seem to be a better build quality than those shipped with the 114M.

I found the 10mm can be a little too much power where the 25mm was not quite there, so bought a 17mm to give me something in between.

Since finding that I could stuff a webcam in the tube in place of an eyepiece I generally only use the eyepieces for alignment and to check the collimation.

Other

KWorld DVD Maker USB2.0

This takes a composite video input (or S-Video) and connects directly to a PC thorugh a USB cable. It ships with video capture software that will support PAL (720×576) and also scale down to other formats. I shopped around when looking for a frame-grabber as the difference in price is quite considerable. I finally settled on the K-World from Novatech which was less than £25.