See Mars the red planet, in the South-West

See the Saturn and its rings, high in the south now

Astronomical Places of interest I have visited

Many of the pictures were taken with Starlight Xpress cameras, initially an MX5 CCD which has a chip size of 4.9mm x 3.6mm and 510 x 290 pixels but recently I have been using an SXVF-M9 camera with an 8.7mm x 6.5mm chip and 752 x 580 pixels. I have used also used various 35mm camera lenses with the cameras and also a DSLR land camera. I have also used a Webcam and video cameras for imaging planets.

My main 'scope is currently a Meade 10" LX200. This is used either in basic f10 mode or with an f6.3 or f3.3 focal reducer for wider fields or a Barlow lens yielding f24 or f33 for some planetary shots. I don't use an autooguider, but rely on the excellent tracking of the LX200 with the periodic error correction. Exposures with this setup are multiples of single 1 to 5 minute shots, the limit on these  being dependent upon periodic error and also the f-ratio used, which can then be stacked up to give longer exposures.

Some pictures were taken with a telephoto lens attached to the CCD camera and guided by the main telescope. This gives a wider field of view, typically 1.5 degrees across for a 200mm lens on the MX5. I also have a digital SLR camera and am using that both through the telescope and guided by it. I have recently been using a 400mm lens with the digital SLR and guided by the main scope. This gives a field of view of about 2.5 degrees.

In 2010 I purchased an 80mm Meade APO refractor which I use both stand alone and piggy backed on the LX200 for photography. This gives higher quality images than the DSLR camera lenses and a field of view of over 2 degrees.

Lunar and planetary pictures are generally short exposures, typically <1 second. The lunar image to the right was taken with a DSLR through my Meade LX200 with an exposure of 1/200th second.  

Using a webcam or a video camera can yield impressive results - like the photo of Jupiter on the left ! Click here to see how it's done.

Although I have been an amateur astronomer for over 40 years, the photographs on this site were all taken since September 1997. In that time I have accumulated thousands of photographs - what is shown here are just examples !!

In all my astronomy I make good use of the Skymap planetarium programme, which I would highly recommend. There is now an on-line version here. This allows me to find and centre objects on the CCD chip and control the scope from the computer. SkyMap Pro includes the GSC and thus stars down to mag 16+ are included, which is a great help with CCD imaging. For image processing I have also been using Astroart, which is an excellent piece of software.

See my Southern skies pictures from Melbourne