The Harvester

 

I used to take my dads 60mm telescope out in the driveway to have a look around the night sky. I didn’t have much luck as  the only thing I could find was the moon but it was still fun. The first telescope I bought was a Meade department store 5.1″ reflector that gave me more grief than enjoyment. I must say that it did give me my first views of The Orion Nebula and Saturn, both of which were awesome! All I could do is say WOW after seeing both objects. That just left me wanting more so I saved up and bought an 8″ Meade  LX200 Classic. I had many wonderful views of many different objects that lurk way out there.  Now, getting into astrophotography, I bought an Orion Atlas mount for long exposure photos. I have not looked through my telescope in a long time and at times I miss that. The thing with photography is you get to bring back more than just a memory, it can be a long and boring process sitting there all night long hoping your exposures come out like you planned but in the long run I think it is worth it.

Equipment

8 inch Meade LX200 Classic Schmidt Cassegrain • 8″ Meade LXD75 Schmidt Newtonian UHTC • 80mm Stellarvue “Raptor” Carbon Fiber refractor • Orion CG6 Atlas mount • Hotech self centering laser collimator • Hotech self centering camera adapter • Telrad 0 x  finder  • Mead 12″ Lightbridge

Eyepieces

40mm William Optics SWAN • 32mm Baader Planetarium Hyperion • 17mm Baader Planetarium Hyperion • 13mm Baader Planetaium Hyperion •5mm Baader Planetaium Hyperion • Televue 2 1/2 X Powermate • 2X Celestron Barlow • 15mm Parks Gold Series • 9mm parks Gold Series

Cameras

Nikon D-40 •  Orion Starshoot Pro Color CCD • Phillips PCVC740K ToUcam webcam•  SBIG ST7 CCD •

Computer Software

Microsoft XP • Adobe Photoshop CS3 • PHD Guiding • DSLR Shutter • Deep Sky Stacker • Maxim DL Essentials • Nebulosity 2 •   The Sky 6 • Nikon Camera Control Pro • Craterlet • Registax • EQMod • EQTour • EQMosaic (have not tried it yet but looks nice for large targets)

Other places of interest

My Images: Have a look at some of my images.

Chris Hendren Astro photography: a friend who shares the same interest.

PCLinuxOS:  Make your computer run great for free.