Monday, October 6, 2014
A new imaging setup starts to build up.
At beginning of the last Spring season my old imaging setup blew up.
During a mandatory Summer pause I have been building a new imaging set up little by little. It starts to be ready mechanically, I need to wait for a couple of clear nights to be able to finalize the setup procedure.
Without a help from couple of great companies this could be a mission impossible for me.
.png)
I have got the most needed help from the beloved neighbour country, Sweden! The Astro Sweden is a largish company specialized to astronomical equipments. They have support my work by equipments and technical knowhow.
Starlight Xpress CCD
I have been using many years some very clever products from the UK based company, Starlight Xpress .
I now have a new Active Optics unit from them, it supports full frame CCD cameras. With the AO-unit I'm using an OAG with the ultra sensitive guider, Lodestar X2. I used to have a smaller version of the AO-unit and Lodestar guider for many years. They really turn any poorly tracking mount to a extremely stable imaging platform. Best of all, the AO-unit works with any third party imaging camera, like the Apogee in my case.
I now have a new Active Optics unit from them, it supports full frame CCD cameras. With the AO-unit I'm using an OAG with the ultra sensitive guider, Lodestar X2. I used to have a smaller version of the AO-unit and Lodestar guider for many years. They really turn any poorly tracking mount to a extremely stable imaging platform. Best of all, the AO-unit works with any third party imaging camera, like the Apogee in my case.
New Setup
click for a large image
Light path
The Active Optics Unit from Starlight Xpress CCD is attached to a large custom made adapter ring at right.
List of new equipments
- Mount, 10-micron 1000
- Optics, Celestron Edge HD 1100
- Camera, Apogee U16 D09 with KAF16803 chip, 4096x4096 9 microns pixels, 36,8x36,8mm
- Filter Wheel, Apogee, seven square slots 50x50mm
- Focuser, FeatherTouch with MicroTouch control unit
- Heater, Dew Buster
- Active Optics Unit, SXV AO LF from Starlight Xpress + OAG
- Guider, an ultra sensitive Lodestar X2, also from Starlight Xpress
- Focal Reducer, Celestron reducer 0.7 for Edge 1100 (Not yet arrived)
- Finder, Telrad
- Filters, Astrodon, H-alpha 5nm, O-III 3nm, S-II 3nm. R, G, B and L
I need to wait for a clear weather to be able to finalize the setup. Few things must be done before any imaging is possible.
To do list
- Polar alignment, The axis of the telescope must be exactly parallel to Earth axis
- Collimation, the optical axis must be perfectly concentric
- Fine tune any possible tilt in CCD to have it perfectly perpendicular to light path.
- FocusMax training, ~30 V-curves to have an accurate model of the optical behavior for auto focusing.
- Temperature compensation training, so that temp expansion of the optics can be compensated.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment