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During the last 3 years, and particularly in Spring of 2010, I added
some significant new equipment. The first major piece was the Losmandy
G11 mount,withe Gemini computer, bought used from my friend Scott
Hanford in Florida. I upgraded the mount's RA worm gear with the
Ovision one-piece worm shortly after. This gets my periodic error to
typically under 5-7 arcseconds, peak-peak. For most of the next 2
years, I used my older Celeston C-8 optical tube on this mount. In
spring of 2010, I bought a complete telescope setup, the new-technology
Celestron EdgeHD 11" optical tube, mounted on a Celestron CGEM german-equatorial
mount. My intention from the start was to use the 11" optical tube on
the Losmandy mount, and put the 8" optical tube on the CGEM. In
addition to the new mount and tube, I bought the Hyperstar III
attachment, allowing me to shoot at an amazing f/2 with the 11" optical
tube. As for cameras, in 2009 I purchased a new Canon 50D and a few
months later had it modified by Hutech by replacing the filter so it
would capture more of the red wavelength that is typical of the best
nebulae in the sky. In Spring of 2010, I added my first serious CCD
camera, the new SBIG ST8300, which I bought in monochrome and added the
5-position filter wheel with clear, red, green, blue, and Hydrogen-Alpha
filters.
For guiding, I now use an Orion EON-80 refractor (shown in BOTTOM photo
below on the 11" optical tube) as a guidescope, and various autoguiders,
including Meade DSI-II and DSI-III monochrome CCD cameras, and the
latest addition (not shown), a Starlight Express Lodestar autoguider.
Of course, I still use my venerable Taurus Tracker III on the 8" optical
tube, for off-axis guiding.
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