Posts Made By: Steven Place

I am putting together a project that would suffice for an astrophotography mount, hopefully in time for the leonides (spelling). My idea centers around the following. . .

I can get an old lx3 2080 fork with the ra built in. No ota, so i would make from wood a plate that would fit between the arms.

Mount that to a standard meade wedge suitable for the 8" scopes.

Place that on a meade standard field tripod that comes with the lx50/lx200.

Mount my camera system between the fork arms as mentioned above, and get full use of the mount to use the ra and dec of the mount to find stuff, while still being able to use lenses into the 300+ range with a good amount of accuracy for 30+ min shots.

Anyone have objections, or thoughts about ways to cut costs? or modify this setup that might be better?


Thanks,


-Steve

There is an artical in this issue that talks about steps needed to take for 'stacking' pictures on the computer. Literally I have a question. I am trying to comprehend the step required from start to finish for a picture.

Lets take for example that I am using E200 Slide for my shots. This for color, or the 'a' and 'b' channels, and then Techpan for the 'l' luminocity channel. Now I know the a and b channel will be on a slide, so i will need to scan it into the computer, or get it on photodisk, etc, but what about the Techpan B&W, which is used to bring out the l channel. Could I literally grey scale my color image, and overlay the two as though to act like it was a black and white? Consider this as being a 'fake' process, rather than actually combining the two images. I have seen some good results with this kind of method (minus the fake part), and are curious if anyone has done this in the method described, or rather, if everyone does it this way?

Thank you for your input,


-Steve

Well this one is kind of odd. I have an old 2080 meade fork with a camera attached to it rather than an 8" OTA. I am trying to figure out where and how to mount a finderscope to get a good alignment for photography. Either drift or polar alignment. Any thoughts on the best way to do this? How would i mount the finder once i figure out where it should go?

I am trying to decide what switch to put inline for this old 2080 mount. I can't figure out how many amps the motor uses. Its obviously just a stepper motor for the ra, no dec. This is pretty retro, i love it. Just would love to have a switch to control it better. (on / off). As well, for info, its just a computer power cable that goes from the base of the unit to the power outlet in a home.

Thanks,


-Steve

This model is just like the new model tripods that Meade sells. Wether or not you can put an lxd55 head on is something I do not know. You can put a wedge and lx series scope fork mount on this that much i know.

Good luck,


-Steve