Posts Made By: Charles Stevenson

Wow that really captures the reds! :-) I haven't heard of that camera from ATIK. Will have to read up on it! :-)

And here's the Sigma lens from the flea market (photo)

Andy, I'm picking up an old Criterion RV-6 tomorrow. I was doing some research and found your project really inspiring! :-) I'll post some photos when I get the scope and maybe you can give me some ideas on where to start. :-)

Great photo :-)

There's a GSO 1.25" that's on the lower end of price. If you find something less let me know. ;-) I'm looking at changing out the plastic rack & pinion on my Meade Starfinder. You could post a wanted ad on AM and I bet you'd get plenty of bargains!

It's true the skies are dark there. We lived in Dove Creek, CO when I was in my last years of high school. I had a Tasco 4" but no one to show me how to use it. Also lived in Blanding, UT for a year or so.

Once again inspiring me :-) I have an SCT C8 and a barlow... and Firecapture... not sure I could ever take such an image. LOL

Hi Ron! If you have a video you can feed it into a program like Autostakkert!2 and/or Registax (both free programs) to sift out the best frames from the video and combine them into a corrected and sharpened image. I use a program called PIPP to shrink the video down to size for input into the two programs just mentioned.

To post a pic you just have to reduce it to less than 500KB for Astromart and click the "Choose File" button when you post a thread. Or use the customer gallery feature top left of the forums (ATWB Customer Gallery).

It's hard to stack deep sky from video but you might have some success at f/7 with an 8" mirror on bright objects. I'm fairly new to this and never got into film. My sense is that digital can be very forgiving but you can't blow up an image to the size you might with film without creating a mosaic.

I could be all wrong... see what others say ;-)

Here's the same shot a little closer crop. Venus is the bright spot center and slightly to the right (see previous photo). Jupiter is obscured behind pyro.

Hello, Matthew! I am in the same boat. Starting in January, after a week or so with a 70mm refractor with cheap Plossls, I went on a the same quest for a view of Jupiter's GRS and more. A Celestron C8 with CG5 mount hooked to a GPS and my computer's serial port followed. Soon after binoviewers, CCD cameras, filter wheels, tons of processing software, and DSLR cameras followed. That was all in the first 3 months.

I will interject that I have an 8 year old and a son who turned two in March and loves to color on the telescopes with crayon and generally misplace lots of my equipment. lol

In the next three months some 7x50 binoculars, a 6-inch Criterion RV-6 on original equatorial mount, Meade Starfinder 10" dobsonian, and an Orion Starblast 4.5" ("for our daughter").

The next step in the problem occurred after/during reading the book Starlight Detectives by Alan Hirschfeld. We're talking aperture fever that could only be achieved, on a tight budget with kids and a non-profit salary, by seeking out means of making a large scope from whatever scraps I can find. This Saturday I acquired a kiln and intend to post about that later--and I also bought some plate glass. The goal to fuse layers of plate glass into mirror blanks, grind them, polish them, and have them coated.

I will probably start selling anything and everything in between to buy the needed supplies for making a large aperture telescope and keep the binoculars and C8 plus DSLR at the very least. I don't see why you would get out entirely. We picked up three trash bags full of baby clothes at the town-wide yard sale for $10 or so. Almost anything you can think of ends up by the side of the road here. We've gotten a sand box, stroller, high chair, etc all free. A very nice crib was bought cheaply off of craigslist. Babies can be fairly cheap assuming no health issues.

I don't think the hobby will stall for me. Thankfully my wife is absolutely enchanted with the idea of a large telescope. I'm hoping to build a second kiln after I master this one... or reconfigure it... to make a 40" mirror blank from plate glass and put that into a string telescope design.

Matthew Marcus said:

Hello,

My name is Matthew and I have a problem. (This is where you say, "Hello Matthew".) I dove into this hobby with the intention of being satisfied with viewing the planets and moon. (Smacks forehead) ...I know. Well, now I am sitting with 4 pairs of astro-binoculars (Orion 20x80's - Scenix 7x50's and 2 pairs of Celestron 15x & 20X by 70 for Solar viewing), 2 (Celestron C90 from 1979 and Nexstar 4se OTA) Mak telescopes (with a 3rd refractor on the way that I have previously owned and I bought it because it is cheaper to pair with a tripod and mount). And not to mention an fairly extensive eyepiece set for .96 and 1.25". And now 3 different types of mount. I think I have weeded out what I want to keep... basically the Nexstar 4se OTA and Scenix binos. But I don't know where to go from here. If I were to sell everything else, what can I manage on a modest budget and be satisfied? Do I cut my loses and get nothing as I have a child coming? Does the hobby stall with children? Thoughts?