|
| |
This is a list of equipment currently used for the projects described on this
site.
Equipment
- Telescope
- Meade ETX-60AT $399 (with tripod and tripod carrying
case)
- Optical Design: Achromatic Refractor
- Aperture: 60mm (2.36")
- Focal Length: 350mm
- Focal Ratio: f/5.8
- Near Focus: 15 ft
- Resolving Power: 1.9 arc secs
- Limiting Visual Stellar Magnitude: 11.2
- Image Scale:
4.1°/Inch
- Maximum Practical Visual Power: 200X
- CCD Imager
- Meade DSI I Color - $299
- The unit uses a USB connection to the computer. The Meade
supplied driver is required even when you use other programs to capture
the images. You need the driver dated 12/13/2004 8:24 am to get it
to work on Windows XP SP2.
- The unit is based on the Sony ICX404AK Diagonal 6mm (Type 1/3) CCD
Image Sensor for NTSC Color Video Cameras. It is a high
sensitivity unit with a low end price - $50 new on eBay. It is pre-fitted with CYMG color
filters and uses an interesting method to offload the color information
from the chip to the USB logic.
Note, CYMG color is used as a CYMG filter passes twice the light as an RGB filter
would. Someone discovered this back in the 70s.
- The unit can be set to most any exposure time the experimenter would
desire using the Meade software. K3CCD V3 does not permit exposure
times of less than 1/250th of a second, making lunar imaging impossible.
- AutoStar Hand Controller
- The controller is included with the ETX-60AT package, and with
tripod, the tripod bag was free.
- AutoStar AstroWare
- This software comes with a connector for the ETX-60AT and has the
limited version of the software that comes with the DSI, enough to
control the telescope. It is my impression that the connection is
identical to the Hand Controller in that both tell the computer in the
motor drive mechanism to move to XYZ. Hand controller is easier to
work with when you already have a list of objects to observe. The
software is nice for random visual viewing of objects on an evening
prior to a planned set of observations. The software also is nice
for planning without being connected to the telescope.
|
