The pictures here are a few I took of my equipment in detail.
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This is my ST80 piggybacked on my LX200. To see details of this construction, click on the image. | |
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This is how I piggyback my camera fitted with an SLR lens on my ETX125. This turned out to be rather too heavy for
the ETX, so, since I took this picture, I have removed a lot of unnecessary wood. The telescope now handles this
extra weight quite well.
I was not able to align the telescope successfully (although it tracked perfectly well),
but with the lightened form, the telescope will align normally. The big white thing on the front is a pipe fitting that
fits my lens perfectly and holds a piece of Baader Solar Film for imaging the Sun. | |
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One problem with the arrangement in the picture above is that the only place I can secure the lens to the mount is an adaptor ring at the back of the lens. This makes for a very insecure mount and it is very difficult to get the lens to line up with the main telescope (fortunately this is seldom necessary). I have a second camera which is a Vesta modified for long exposures, and this is mounted in a relatively large metal box. This box can be secured to the base and the camera supports the lenses. This picture shows it with my solar filter on the front. You can also see that I have a filter over the finder 'scope. | |
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This shows how I add a 2X teleview adaptor to my ETX125. I use essentially the same arrangement on my LX200. The magnification produced can be adjusted by the number of spacers between the lens and the camera. Normally I do not use the left-hand spacer in this picture; this makes the distance between the lens and the camera close to what it would be on a standard SLR camera. This means the lens is being used as it was designed to be used; always a good idea. | |
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This is an alternative way of enlarging the image from a telescope. The eyepiece is used in place of the teleadaptor or a barlow lens. Although this is using the eyepiece in a way for which it was not designed, this method works well. For a more detailed discussion, with examples, click here. | |