| My name is Chris. I am an Electrician and amatuer astronomer. I have two children Chrystan and Caetlyn. I grew up in a small town in upstate New York. Willsboro is a town of about 1000 residents on the shores of Lake Champlain, in the northern Adirondacks. As a child I grew to love the outdoors, I gained an appreciation for wildlife, and the untouched Adirondack State Park. I can recall staring at the sky on cold, clear winter nights imagining my place in the universe. Wondering why, and how all the stars came to be and, what was out side of my vision. I never had a telescope as a child, nor did I ever learn much about the heavens above us. But, the beauty of the night sky always compelled me to dream. I purchased my daughter a telescope as a kindergarden graduation present, a 130mm reflector. This telescope had a computerized controller that would find objects in the sky for you. Well, my daughter never really took much of an interest in the scope and it became Dad's toy. I used this scope for about 4 or 5 months, I saw the moons of Jupiter and glimpsed my first galaxy with it. I was hooked, and soon I needed a better, bigger scope. During the Mars opposition of 2003, I purchased a Meade ETX 125. This is a 5" Maskutov telescope, it uses mirrors and lenses to form an image. I had read much on the ability of such telescopes to produce high resolution images of planets. This scope has a long focal length of F/15. The long focal length produces a narrow field of view, but very good contrast. I can honestly say that this scope was a good performer, at closest approach of Mars during the opposition, I could see a wealth of detail such as the polar ice caps and some surface features. After spending a few months with the scope I began to realize that there are only so many planets to look at, the only ones that really show any detail are Jupiter, Saturn, and at certain times Mars. Anyone who knows me can tell you that I get bored easily, and I quickly found out that planetary observing was not my thing. I wanted to see more again, so now what? I started reading more about galaxies, nebula, and star clusters. I began to realize the only way for me to see what I wanted to see was to try astrophotography. The human eye is not sensitive enough to pick up much color or detail in objects hundreds or millions of light years away. So I went back to researching on the net. Most of the great images I saw where CCD, or digital images. Film images where hard to come by as film is mostly a lost art. Most of the CCD cameras where way to costly for me and required seperate exposures of luminosity, red, blue, and green. This seemed like a lot of work. So, with cost in mind, I decided to try film. I received a Olympus OM-1 for a Christmas present. This was to be used with my new Meade LXD 55 10 inch Schimdt Newtonian telescope. This scope is a reflector, with a correcting lense for spherical abberations. This scope is an F/4 focal ratio, this is a "Fast" scope. I decide on a fast F ratio to keep my exposure times to a minimum. This has it's cons though as you get below F/6 abberations in optics and the design of the scope become troublesome. Collimation (optical alignment) on such a fast scope is critical. Thiis scope is mounted on a German Equatorial mount, which is crucial for long exposure astrophotography. The mount has a 41,000 object database which when properly aligned can point itself to just about any object I choose and track it with precision. The learning curve on this mount was very steep to say the least, polar alignment, and precise balancing were issues that caused me a lot of grief. I achieved a decent photo on my first attempt. The photo was of M-42 The Great Nebula in Orion. It was a five minute unguided exposure. I took many shots that night of about the same duration, 90% of the photos had horrible star trails and I thought something was wrong. So back to the net I went to do more research. I discovered my scopes mount was suffering from what is called periodic error! Sounds bad, I know but with more research I discovered that this is a common disease found in ALL mounts even the $145,000 jobs. Periodic error is caused by inaccuracies in the drives worm, and worm gear. The best machines in the world can not produce a perfect gear or worm. So, now what? Well, I decided to get another scope to mount on my big scope. This coupled with a illuminated reticle eyepiece, makes it possible to guide the errors out by watching a star in the eyepiece and keeping it in the same spot. This is called manual guiding...and it sucks! Keeping your eye to an eyepiece, and watching a pinpoint of light for thirty minutes or more, with out touching the scope is to say the least rough.. After about ten minutes you kind of start to feel your eyeball growing into a cone shape, then your back starts to hurt, your nose itches, you have to go to the bathroom, your feet get cold, the list goes on and on. I did manage a few decent pictures manually guiding, but I decided that this form of guiding was not for me. As anyone that knows me could tell you I am lazy. So I decided to try autoguiding. This involved purchasing a CCD camera that can be used in the guidescope or off axis guider. It hooks to my computer and once I have selected a star it keeps the main scope on target, well that is when I have it working correctly. This proved to be a great solution, and now I can go inside and stay warm while the autoguider does all the work. It has definatly improved my astrophotography, as my average of usable shots has increased from 1 or 2 a roll to 3 out of 5 shots. I have exposed up to 1 hour with no star trails! On July, 23 2005 I completed the 4 C's Observatory. I would like to thank my father Harold for his patience and help in making my dream a reality, as I know I am a hard person to work with at times. Also special thanks to my wife Corinne, without her support, patience, and love none of this would be possible. Now my astrophotography and observing time will be only limited by weather and light pollution. Keep checking back as I will write updates often. Thanks for reading my ramblings, I know I jumped all over the place but like I said I get bored easily! |