Posts Made By: Jonas Carlsson

Dear All,

I hope You can oversee that the following does not have much to do with the discussions here but we feel that we would like to get this information out as soon as possible - to as many people as possible.

Sometime from the morning of the 22:nd of December to the morning of the 23:rd, there has been a burglary in the astronomical observatory belonging to the college of Kristianstad (Sweden) and it's main instrument has been stolen.

We would now beg of you to keep your eyes open since the thefts might be trying to sell the telescope via Internet.
If you see an add, that look suspicious, in the way that the seller might be asking for a far too low price or similar signs, please contact undersigned as soon as possible on following E-mail address:

Jonas Carlssson: [email protected] Tel: +46 44 12 95 35 or +46 733 528 620

The telescope that has been stolen is of the following type:

Meade LX 200 12 inch F 10 Schmidt-Cassegrain with hand control unit and a so called "superwedge".
The telescope was also equipped with a Meade #929 2 inch Diagonal Prism and Meade's most advanced Illuminated Reticle Eyepiece (with micrometric X-Y positioning). Also, the telescope was equipped with Meade #1206 Electric Focuser.
The buying value of the total telescope is in Sweden about $6000.

Attached is a photo of the telescope taken at an earlier occation.

Best Regards and

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Jonas Carlsson

(President of the Astronomical Society Aquila in Kristianstad, Sweden)

Dear All,

I hope You can oversee that the following does not have much to do with the discussions here but we feel that we would like to get this information out as soon as possible - to as many people as possible.

Sometime from the morning of the 22:nd of December to the morning of the 23:rd, there has been a burglary in the astronomical observatory belonging to the college of Kristianstad (Sweden) and it's main instrument has been stolen.

We would now beg of you to keep your eyes open since the thefts might be trying to sell the telescope via Internet.
If you see an add, that look suspicious, in the way that the seller might be asking for a far too low price or similar signs, please contact undersigned as soon as possible on following E-mail address:

Jonas Carlssson: [email protected] Tel: +46 44 12 95 35 or +46 733 528 620

The telescope that has been stolen is of the following type:

Meade LX 200 12 inch F 10 Schmidt-Cassegrain with hand control unit and a so called "superwedge".
The telescope was also equipped with a Meade #929 2 inch Diagonal Prism and Meade's most advanced Illuminated Reticle Eyepiece (with micrometric X-Y positioning). Also, the telescope was equipped with Meade #1206 Electric Focuser.
The buying value of the total telescope is in Sweden about $6000.

Attached is a photo of the telescope taken at an earlier occation.

Best Regards and

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Jonas Carlsson

(President of the Astronomical Society Aquila in Kristianstad, Sweden)

Hi!

At last I got an opportunity to test my new HEQ-6 PRO during a night
of clear sky and I can say that I am very satisfied!

Background:
As most people here i Sweden, I have had really bad weather for about
one and a half month. During the few hours of clear sky between the
clouds when I have had a possibility to adjust the polar screen, I
have - if not reach all the way - so at least close to a position of
it where I feel satisfied and Saturday night I had a chance to see
how well the mount worked.

I begun with setting the mount up with the polar finder roughly
pointing to north. Then I levelled the mount with the internal level
indicator (incorporated in the mount).

After this I rotated the polar shaft so that the small map on the
polar screen fairly well matched the position of the actual star
patterns on the sky. At this point I only had to adjust the mount
sideways to get Polaris into the small circle on the polar screen.
Now it was time to mount the telescope, which for the evening was to
be my 8" Schmidt-Newton with 60/700 mm guide telescope (with
illuminated reticle and 2x barlow lens for manual guiding).

After carried out a three star alignment (on Vega, Deneb and Castor)
the first visual object (M45) was chosen from the data base and it
turned up in the middle of the telescope field. The same for the next
tested objects M42 and M31. Now it was time for checking the tracking
of the mount.

Centered the telescope on M45 again and centered one of the stars in
the reticle of the guide scope. It looked fine so I prepared for
photography and started with one minute exposures but went soon up to
two minute exposures. OK, I had to adjust the drift once and awhile
in one of the directions but in the other it was not moving at all.
Nice!

Exposures of different objects in the sky succeeded each other and
during the whole time, the tracking was good. At the end of the night
session, I was doing 7 minute exposures and as the day had been
filled with hard physical work, the night was late, I was tired and
the tracking was so good, I had so little to do that I nearly fell
asleep during the longer exposures.

Conclusion:
After my first night with the new mount I am very satisfied! OK,
there are still some adjustment to do to the polar screen but it will
certainly don't make the performance any worse!

Pictures? Well, my aim was mainly to see how well the mount was doing
so I wasn't really focused on reaching - focus. There are some
pictures I think is pretty good but I'm not sure I have the time to
do any digital processing before Christmas.

Best Regards

Jonas

I own a Canon 350D (I think it's called Rebel XT in america) and I'm very happy with it.
It has all the capabilities of an old film based SLR, the weight of the body is low and it can easily be controlled using a computer (if one would want this).
With the 350D I use both my old Canon FD lenses and M42 threaded lenses with adapters and of course I also use the camera on the telescopes with a wireless control.
The M42 adapter is cheap. I payed about $20 for mine. The FD adapter was more expensive, around $150. This is because it's more complex.

Regards

Jonas

Hi Rikki,

About 6 months ago I bought a Skywatcher EQ-6 PRO which is the same mount as the Orion EQ-G. The mount has full GoTo and possibility to connect autoguider.
Before deciding what to buy, I set up some demands on the future mount:
- Full GoTo
- Capable of carrying at least 20 kilograms
- As few cables as possible

I thought for a while on the Losmandy G-11 but the specifications are about the same for EQ-6 Pro that have a much lower price so I bought this insted and I haven't regret this. A positive thing is also that the mount only have one external cable and that is for power supply.
The mount is a dream to set up and use and have no problem running my home made 10"/f:7 Newtonian with a camera connected and a guide scope mounted on it.

When taking this mount together with my 8" Schmidt-Newtonian and guide scope to a remote dark site, It take me about 20-30 minutes to set the mount and telescope up, polar align and start taking my first test exposures. I find this to be very acceptable.

As you understand, I strongly recommend the EQ-6 PRO/EQ-G mount.

Best Regards

Jonas

Maybe this mount could be something for you:
http://asp.trackthestars.com/

Regards
Jonas

I haven't heard of anyone doing this but I have been thinking of trying out the same with my schmidt camera.
This will require a field flattener though. Maybe it could work with a flat/concave lens. Anyone knows?

Regards

Jonas

It may be so that you could consider an old Unitron mount. Those are very reliabla and can take a lot more weight than told in the specifications.
I have for instance this old Polarex 803 mount (Unitron was also marketed with the name Polarex in Europe) and it can easily take my 8" Schmidt-Newton with 2.4" guide scope and DSLR camera for photography. OK, I have a frequency corrector for the motor drive but thats needed for photography, not visual.
It's a lightweight mount as might be seen in the picture attached.

Regards

Jonas

My method of focusing is to use a star which is not too bright and focus (through the viewfinder) until I see the spikes from it separating. I think the separation is called difraction. When I see this, I know the focus is fine.

Best Regards

Jonas

Since the focal length of the newt is 800 mm and the Pronto with barlow is around 950 mm and you are to guide manually, I recommend that you use the newt as guide scope and image with the Pronto.
If you had an autoguider, I would say the other way around.
The Pronto is quite a good imager but you will have some chromatic abberations. those can easily be taken away during image processing though.

Good luck with the imaging!

Regards

Jonas