Equipment

The first camera I used was an MX5C that belonged to a group I was a member of, a long time ago, at least it seems so, about 1997 I suppose.

Some years later I bought a used MX7C with a USB2 interface, as the camera was a parallel port version. I also bought the STAR2000 guiding system that the previous owner used. Lots of fun with that one. Able to guide at last, making for longer exposures instead of lots of little ones, allowing me to register fainter nebulosity. The guiding was good, and I found later that the ability to choose any star in the field was a major plus, but the need to take darks was an awful bind, but for the money it was all marvellous fun. Seeing the result drop onto the laptop screen after waiting impatiently for several minutes always gave me a jolt. It still does. And that's what it's all for.

I graduated form the MX7C to an H9C and that kept me happy for a few years. But as with all such technical things I lusted after something bigger and moved to my current camera an M25C.

This has an APS sized chip, a major improvement on the H9C in terms of area covered, and indeed the MX7C and MX5C, but it exposes the limitations of normal refractors in that they have difficulty in covering the whole chip, filling the outer edges with coma stars calling for field flatteners to lessen the problem and for the use of flats to defeat vignetting. The telescope I'm currently using is a Skywatcher 80ED Pro, mounted on a Meade 14" LX200GPS, which I use for guiding. The Meade belongs to the Doncaster AS, where I look after the observatory.