I had two options - I could either get a bigger mounting, or reduce the size of the telescope. As the mounting and small counterweight already weighed in at 125 pounds I opted for the smaller scope option. My astrophoto setup had to remain portable to get out of the city, and the DS-16 mount was already a handfull! I am very happy I went this route - this mounting is a solid foundation for the scopes I currently use. Wind was still a problem on some nights with the larger scopes, so I looked at ways to stop the wind from hitting the scope in the first place. When I go to star parties or out for a long weekend, I bring along a wind break.

The wind break is simple to construct - all you need are a few telescopic tent poles (pointed at one end) some string and a tarpaulin. Hammer the poles into the ground pointed end down and adjust to the desired height. Attach the tarpaulin and voila, one instant wind break. This is such a simple idea but it took many years before I started using it. Not only does this keep the scope out of the wind, but it keeps you out of the wind as well. This makes for more comfortable guiding, especially in the winter. If your scope bounces in the wind when you are trying to take a photo, consider putting up a wind break.

Once I could concentrate on my guiding properly, I couldn't help but notice the periodic error from the telescopes' drive system. There was error of several arc minutes - enough to ruin any prime focus shot through the telescope. The drive was great visually and not too bad for short exposures, but long photos required constant attention and most showed a small amount of trailing. (Usually due to "micro-sleeps"!) In the fall of 1989 I decided to order up a 9.3 inch drive system from Mathis. This required making a few parts to firmly attach the drive system to the mounting. A strong backing plate was required to mount all the parts onto. This is the large plate that attaches to the bottom end of the polar shaft. A bracket was also required to mount the motor and worm gear assembly. To cut down on the number of wires, I also built the drive corrector into the drive base. Finally, a cover was built to enclose everything. I decided against a digital stepper motor, instead I built a quartz analogue 110v drive corrector using two simple integrated circuits and transistors.

I have recently completed a new pier assembly with help from local RASC members Rick Keppler, Rick Weis and Bob Morgan. The pier has gone from thin wall tubing to 1/4 inch steel pipe - and gained about 35 pounds. The original cast aluminum legs are now welded 2 inch box steel and 3 inch steel "U" channel - all triangulated. The pier is threaded so that the legs easily bolt into place with 1/2 inch socket head bolts. This has resulted in considerably more tonnage - but has made the mount noticeably stiffer when I use the larger scopes. If you have access to welding equipment this is not a hard modification to do, nor is scrap steel very expensive.

The cameras I use are mainly the Olympus OM-1 and OM-2. (Both discontinued) The required features of a good astro camera are few and are easily met by many of the used cameras on the market. The most important feature is a manual shutter - the ability to hold the shutter open for extended periods without needing batteries. This is usually indicated by "B" or "bulb" on the shutter setting. A means of attaching a lockable shutter release cable is also needed, fortunately most mechanical cameras have this. A light-weight camera body is preferred as it is easier to balance the scope. Finally, an interchangeable focusing screen is a nice feature. Split prism screens don't work when focusing on a star! I use the Olympus 1-8 screen, a fine ground matte. To get good focus, I use the 6X critical focus magnifier from Lumicon. This is nothing more than a light-weight 6X finder attached to the camera's viewfinder and focused to the focusing screen. I have used this since the late '80's and rarely have a shot out of focus.

When shooting prime focus with the larger Newtonians, I use Lumicon's newtonian easy-guider. There are other brands available now, but not back in 1986! It has stood the test of time and I recommend it to anyone looking for an off-axis guider. To get the guiding magnification up, I use Lumicon's 3X relay diagonal/barlow. The optical quality isn't great, but it gives the magnification you need for good guiding. With smaller scopes, it is sometimes impossible to get a bright guide star. For this I have a 60mm f15 refractor which can be moved up to 5 degrees to get a guide star. The downside to this is that the guiding eyepiece is close to ground level. In winter this means lying in a snowbank to take the shot!

Another piece of necessary hardware is the guiding eyepiece, of which there are many on the market. I use an old 12mm Meade model, which gets power from the drive corrector instead of a 9v battery. There are many models around - 6mm, 9mm, 12mm, wireless or wired. Wireless ones are nice, If you can afford the expensive batteries that they use. As for focal length - I wear glasses, so I needed one with good eye relief that was comfortable to look through for hours at a time. I never did find a 6mm or 9mm with good eye relief (this may have changed now) so I settled on the 12mm with a barlow. Whatever guiding eyepiece you choose, make sure it will be comfortable to use or it will be difficult to concentrate on your guiding.

Some of the widefield images on this web site were taken with a special photographic telescope called a Schmidt Camera. These cameras feature very high resolution images over a very wide field combined with fast photographic speed. They are capable of capturing faint nebulae or detailed shots of galaxy groups in a matter of minutes, with detail limited by the grain of the film.

The downside is that the guiding must be very accurate, the skies must be prestine and you must bend one piece of film at a time to match the curved focal plane of the Schmidt. The film is bent to the correct curve using a special film holder, but the film handling must be done in total darkness - preferably in a dust-free environment. The camera doesn't have a shutter or a film advance knob, so it is pretty much limited to astrophotography. In other words, it only does one job but it does it very well! The Schmidt shots are pretty easy to spot, they are the ones with the most stars in them! The set-up in the above photo uses a 4.5 inch Newtonian as a guidescope and a 6x30 finder to center the photographic field.

Over the last few years I have become more interested in smaller objects - things like galaxy groups and planetary nebula. My Newtonians have not had sufficient focal length, and SCT's have not had the image sharpness I was after. I have also been wishing for a lighter mount, which seems to be getting a bit heavier each year! Both of these ideas collided early in 2003 when I decided to look at doing both at once. After 17 years with my Meade mount, it now has a sibling - the famous Losmandy G-11 mount. It weighs about half of what my Meade does, has "luxury" features like azimuth and altitude adjustments, PEC and it is tall enough that I don't need to lie on the ground to take pictures! I haven't had it long, but so far it is working out very well.

At about the same time I became aware of an unusual optical system from Vixen of Japan. The VC200L is a Cassegrain design, but without the corrector plate found in classic Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes. It has a 3 element field flattener placed in the baffle tube, which gives a flat photographic field. It also avoids mirror flop during an exposure by using an external focuser, and it is 1800mm long. This longer focal length was exactly what I was after, and the G-11 mount should be able to deliver the guiding accuracy required to shoot both film and CCD with this scope. So far the weather has not been the best since the system was put together and my one clear night was ruined by bad film. As results start to flow, I will post them to the web site.