I have had a few different scopes and accessories over the years. I started with a TAL 1, 4.5" reflector. I then bought a second hand 8", F/4 reflector on a Vixen GP mount. Later I added a Sky Sensor 2000 PC/GOTO controller. After a while I wanted more aperature, so bought a Meade, 10" LX200. This has been my work horse scope for quite a few years, but as from 2008 I have decided to sell it and go back to using the Vixen GP mount setup. I also managed to buy an 8", F/10 Meade tube to fit onto the GP mount so I can either use an F/4 scope for wide fields or F/10 for planets or higher resolution imaging.
After palying around with scanning slide film images with a Nikon coolscan slide scannner, I decided that CCD imaging was the way forward. It gave a quicker and easier way of imaging plus was more powerful when it came to processing the images. My first camera was a Starlight Express SX camera. It had a parallel port adapter and took reasonable images. I then invested in a Starlight Express MX916 camrea. These are more sensertive and connect using USB. The other advatage was the STAR2000 device that could be used with them that allowed imaging and automatic guiding corrections to be done at the same time using just one camera.
Here are some images of the different equipment.
 |
8", F/4 reflector on GP mount. |
 |
Meade LX200. |
 |
Nikon Coolscan III, LS-30. |
 |
My first Starlight Express SX camera. |
 |
Current MX916 camera. |