Updated Equipment Inventory - October 2011
I sold my APM 130/780 triplet apo in late 2010 and acquired a used Takahashi Epsilon180ED f/2.8 hyperbolic flat-field astrograph with the proceeds of the sale. The focuser on the astrograph was the Takahashi micro-edge 1:10 reduction assembly and didn't quite feel up to par with the heavy FLI ML8300 CCD camera and Orion 2" manual filter wheel assembly I put on the astrograph. So, after much searching for a used one, I bit the bullet and procured a new Feathertouch retrofit focuser for the astrograph. Putting it on and tweaking it was a breeze thanks to the detailed illustrated instructions. This is a SOLID and superb focuser which is perfectly matched to the capabilities of the Epsilon and is silky-smooth in feel and very precise in operation. As a plus, it allows me to utilize the Feathertouch digital motorized focuser solution and focusing is with this set up is extremely accurate enabling precise focus to be achieved despite the incredibly shallow 17 micron depth of field that results from the fast f/2.8 speed of the Epsilon astrograph. For a while, I piggybacked the Takahashi FS-60C on top of the Epsilon (with the microedge focuser from the Epsilon now on the FS-60C). However, because the focuser stuck out to the side and had the heavy camera and CFW on it, balance in the DEC axis was not perfect. So I acquired a used Losmandy DSBS (dual side-by-side) dovetail bar assembly from a seller on Astromart for a very good price. It works perfectly. The FS-60C can be mounted to the side of the Epsilon and perfect balance in DEC can be achieved. This is shown in the pictures below. After a couple weeks of using this assembly, I decided to put my Celestron 6inch f/8 achromatic refractor which has a superb Moonlite tri-speed focuser and is equipped with a Chromacor U-1 in place of the FS-60C. I wasn't sure that the NJP could handle BOTH the Epsilon180 and the Celestron 6 inch refractor, but guess what, it just laughs at this load and easily carries both these heavy scopes despite their ungainly nature (Epsilon - short and stubby and Celestron refractor - long and skinny.....kinda like a Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy situation) of the side by side set up. Perfect DEC balance was once again ridiculously easy to achieve. I have a total of FOUR 14 pound takahashi weights on the counterweight arm but they weren't quite enough. Not wanting to buy a new one, I opted instead to strap a couple of inexpensive ankle weights on the counterweight arm and the assembly is perfectly balanced in both axes. Mount operation is unaffected and goto and tracking are accurate. See the pictures of the new set up below.
"Brahmand Darshan" - My Roll-Off Roof Observatory
I finally have a roll-off roof style observatory in my backyard. Construction of this observatory took a fairly long time with activity spurts and lulls due to a hectic work and family schedule. In the Fall/Winter of 2009, we put in a concrete pier in the backyard, followed a few months later (Early Spring 2010) with the construction of an 8ft x 10ft wooden deck around the pier. Most recently (Late September and Early October 2010) we finished the project by building an 8ft. x 10ft. prefab metal shed modified with a roll-off roof on the deck. This design is heavily based on Ivan Gastaldo's backyard observatory with a few modifications, and he was kind enough to answer several questions that I had during the planning phase. I am especially grateful to members of the Brazos Valley Astronomy Club including Tim Cowden, Somasundaram Essakiappan, Kirk Richardson, Gerry Creager and others as well as to my Father-in-Law Harshad Amin and my neighbor Tim for their help in getting the observatory built. Please check out the pictures below which show the various phases of construction. It was a fun and challenging project and I will continue to reap the benefits for years to come. We have named the new observatory "Brahmand Darshan" which is a Sanskrit phrase and loosely translated means "window to creation" or "view of the cosmos".
Sharma's Backyard Astrophotography Set-Up (Pre-2010)
I rarely get an opportunity to travel out to dark skies these days, with both my lovely ladies going to school it is nearly impossible to get away for a whole evening and part of the night - Harshali is in Kindergarten and Bhumi recently enrolled in a one year certification in clinical lab technology course run by St. Joseph Hospital. So, in 2009 I established a semi-permanent observing/imaging assembly in my backyard which allows me to spend the evenings with them while simultaneously getting some imaging done. It consisted of a high quality heavy duty equatorial mount on a pier permanently polar aligned and placed in one corner close to the back fence. A heavy duty tarp was used to cover the set up and although low tech, this set-up worked quite well for me. I simply removed the cover from this set-up and got my scopes and cameras attached and started the imaging process. Harshali insisted on being a "good astronomy daughter" and helped me set up - she carried the lighter items out and handed me stuff. It took about 20 minutes to set-up and about 30 minutes to tear down each night I was imaging which was long enough to motivate me further to build a backyard observatory with a permanent set-up. See the pictures below to get an idea of this process. Now that I have a roll-off roof observatory this time has been cut down to less than five minutes.
Current Equipment Inventory - (Pre 2010)
My equipment inventory at the present time consists of:
Mount and Pier: Takahashi NJP Temma 2 goto equatorial mount previously on a dedicated Takahashi NJP pier., but now on a concrete pier in my roll off roof backyard observatory. The Takahashi pier was the "portable" kind (not really - it's much too heavy to be portable in one piece) and it sat on bricks on the ground. With the building of my backyard observatory, the dedicated NJP pier has been sold. The NJP Temma 2 mount on the other hand still serves me faithfully and quite well. It is rated for a 65 lb. load, but it is easily capable of carrying 50 - 60% more without breaking a sweat. It is an extremely smooth mount with periodic error of +/- 4 arcsec and I've used it on occasion to collect half-hour individual subframes with nice round stars. Needless to say, I'm impressed with it's capabilities.
Main Scope: APM/TMB 130/780 LW triplet apochromatic refractor equipped with a 2" Feathertouch reverse Crayford focuser. The focuser has the Feathertouch digital motorized focuser solution attached and although I only use the hand controller to achieve best focus via Nebulosity's fine focus routine, it does have the ability to be connected to the PC for automated and temperature compensated focusing. At f/6 the TMB 130/780 refractor is a fine astrograph although it is a bit on the slow side. I had been utilizing a TS-Optical Field Flattener (no focal reduction) which does not provide focal reduction when imaging with large chip cameras such as my old QHY8 or my current FLI ML8300. Field flattening performance is not great but I live with it because the dedicated flattener from APM is WAAAAAAY overpriced (~$1500). I picked up a Televue RFL-4087 0.8x Focal Reducer/Flattener which is designed for the TV-101 scope. After figuring out the correct field lens to chip distance for my set-up, I had Precise Parts fabricate some solid adapters to hook it up to the scope and camera and it seems to be doing a decent job of reducing the focal length and does provide acceptable flattening performance except out at the very edges of the FOV.
Guide Scope: Orion ED80 doublet apochromatic refractor. I've powdercoated this one white to match the paint job on the main scope. Works quite well as a guidescope and I have used it occasionally as an imaging scope too.
Main Imaging Camera: FLI ML8300 monochrome equipped with the new Kodak KAF8300 chip. Has 8.3M pixels and a small 5.4 micron square pixel size and decent QE. Somewhat shallow fullwell capacity (25.5Ke), but hey... Good match for the moderate focal length (780 mm) of my scope on most nights.
Guide Camera: Meade DSI Pro monochrome. This is a fine guide camera and is quite sensitive. I can always find a guide star with 2 second exposure times on any given night without issues.
Color Filter Wheel and Imaging Filters: It may surprise some, but I do not own any LRGB filters at this time. The issue is that I am limited to narrowband imaging from my backyard. For this purpose, I have the Baader 2" narrowband filter set consisting of H-alpha, OIII and SII filters which all have a nominal FWHM of 7nm centered around the appropriate wavelength. These are housed in a 4 position manual (yup, you heard that right - minimal automation in Sharma's backyard) color filter wheel from Orion. It's a fine CFW and works quite well. Good price-to-performance.
Control PC: I use a Dell Vostro laptop to control the set-up. Cartes du Ciel is used for controlling the mount through ASCOM. Nebulosity 2 is used to control the camera and capture images by setting up a basic automated sequence of exposures. PhD Guiding is used to autoguide. All in all, a very basic, inexpensive software suite, but it gets the job done. Image processing is done in Nebulosity 2 and Photoshop CS2.
Yes, I do still own some eyepieces and a dielectric diagonal for those rare occasions when I want to visually look at some planetary targets from my backyard.
In particular, I am impressed with my University Optics 32mm Mk-80 Konig ultra-wide angle eyepiece. I have a review of this eyepiece (compared to two other eyepieces) here.
I may spend more time and effort automating my imaging set-up now that I have a roll-off observatory. But for now, I'm okay...
Mount and Pier: Takahashi NJP Temma 2 goto equatorial mount previously on a dedicated Takahashi NJP pier., but now on a concrete pier in my roll off roof backyard observatory. The Takahashi pier was the "portable" kind (not really - it's much too heavy to be portable in one piece) and it sat on bricks on the ground. With the building of my backyard observatory, the dedicated NJP pier has been sold. The NJP Temma 2 mount on the other hand still serves me faithfully and quite well. It is rated for a 65 lb. load, but it is easily capable of carrying 50 - 60% more without breaking a sweat. It is an extremely smooth mount with periodic error of +/- 4 arcsec and I've used it on occasion to collect half-hour individual subframes with nice round stars. Needless to say, I'm impressed with it's capabilities.
Main Scope: APM/TMB 130/780 LW triplet apochromatic refractor equipped with a 2" Feathertouch reverse Crayford focuser. The focuser has the Feathertouch digital motorized focuser solution attached and although I only use the hand controller to achieve best focus via Nebulosity's fine focus routine, it does have the ability to be connected to the PC for automated and temperature compensated focusing. At f/6 the TMB 130/780 refractor is a fine astrograph although it is a bit on the slow side. I had been utilizing a TS-Optical Field Flattener (no focal reduction) which does not provide focal reduction when imaging with large chip cameras such as my old QHY8 or my current FLI ML8300. Field flattening performance is not great but I live with it because the dedicated flattener from APM is WAAAAAAY overpriced (~$1500). I picked up a Televue RFL-4087 0.8x Focal Reducer/Flattener which is designed for the TV-101 scope. After figuring out the correct field lens to chip distance for my set-up, I had Precise Parts fabricate some solid adapters to hook it up to the scope and camera and it seems to be doing a decent job of reducing the focal length and does provide acceptable flattening performance except out at the very edges of the FOV.
Guide Scope: Orion ED80 doublet apochromatic refractor. I've powdercoated this one white to match the paint job on the main scope. Works quite well as a guidescope and I have used it occasionally as an imaging scope too.
Main Imaging Camera: FLI ML8300 monochrome equipped with the new Kodak KAF8300 chip. Has 8.3M pixels and a small 5.4 micron square pixel size and decent QE. Somewhat shallow fullwell capacity (25.5Ke), but hey... Good match for the moderate focal length (780 mm) of my scope on most nights.
Guide Camera: Meade DSI Pro monochrome. This is a fine guide camera and is quite sensitive. I can always find a guide star with 2 second exposure times on any given night without issues.
Color Filter Wheel and Imaging Filters: It may surprise some, but I do not own any LRGB filters at this time. The issue is that I am limited to narrowband imaging from my backyard. For this purpose, I have the Baader 2" narrowband filter set consisting of H-alpha, OIII and SII filters which all have a nominal FWHM of 7nm centered around the appropriate wavelength. These are housed in a 4 position manual (yup, you heard that right - minimal automation in Sharma's backyard) color filter wheel from Orion. It's a fine CFW and works quite well. Good price-to-performance.
Control PC: I use a Dell Vostro laptop to control the set-up. Cartes du Ciel is used for controlling the mount through ASCOM. Nebulosity 2 is used to control the camera and capture images by setting up a basic automated sequence of exposures. PhD Guiding is used to autoguide. All in all, a very basic, inexpensive software suite, but it gets the job done. Image processing is done in Nebulosity 2 and Photoshop CS2.
Yes, I do still own some eyepieces and a dielectric diagonal for those rare occasions when I want to visually look at some planetary targets from my backyard.
In particular, I am impressed with my University Optics 32mm Mk-80 Konig ultra-wide angle eyepiece. I have a review of this eyepiece (compared to two other eyepieces) here.
I may spend more time and effort automating my imaging set-up now that I have a roll-off observatory. But for now, I'm okay...
Previous Equipment Owned and Enjoyed
My first real equipment purchase was a pair of inexpensive 11x70 binoculars (Barska) which I utilized from the heavily light polluted suburban skies of Pittsburgh, PA. While modest, they did allow me to view the brighter Messier objects from the window of our third story apartment in Shadyside. I can still remember with fondness the many pleasureable hours spent looking at the Pleaides, the Orion Nebula region, the Beehive and the Andromeda Galaxy through these binoculars. I'd occasionally look at the Moon through these (TONS of chromatic aberration) and marvel that men had actually walked on that cold, starkly cratered surface.
The first "serious" scope which I owned was a Celestron Nexstar 8i which I picked up used off Astromart in late 2003. For a review that I wrote of this scope, please click here.
I wanted to try my hand at imaging and so I acquired a high quality Intes M500 Maksutov and a Celestron AS-GT computerized GEM mount for this scope. I also acquired an Orion ED80 doublet apochromatic refractor. I've done a side by side comparison of these two scopes here.
As my observing and imaging interests changed, I would trade in older equipment and acquire newer items. So over time, I've owned several scopes, eyepieces, mounts and imaging cameras. These scopes have included SCT designs, Maksutov designs, Newtonian reflectors and achromatic and apochromatic refractor designs. I've owned inexpensive Huygenian eyepieces, modern Plossl eyepieces, exotic Nagler and Konig design eyepieces and qaulity orthoscopic eyepieces. I've also enjoyed three German Equatorial Mounts, namely a Celestron AS-GT, an Orion Atlas EQ-G (EQMOD) and a Takahashi NJP Temma 2. I've also had the pleasure of owning and using a high quality isostatic Alt-Az mount, namely the APM/Berlebach GR3-DX (Giro III Delux). And I've enjoyed owning and utilizing all these scopes, mounts and eyepieces.
The first "serious" scope which I owned was a Celestron Nexstar 8i which I picked up used off Astromart in late 2003. For a review that I wrote of this scope, please click here.
I wanted to try my hand at imaging and so I acquired a high quality Intes M500 Maksutov and a Celestron AS-GT computerized GEM mount for this scope. I also acquired an Orion ED80 doublet apochromatic refractor. I've done a side by side comparison of these two scopes here.
As my observing and imaging interests changed, I would trade in older equipment and acquire newer items. So over time, I've owned several scopes, eyepieces, mounts and imaging cameras. These scopes have included SCT designs, Maksutov designs, Newtonian reflectors and achromatic and apochromatic refractor designs. I've owned inexpensive Huygenian eyepieces, modern Plossl eyepieces, exotic Nagler and Konig design eyepieces and qaulity orthoscopic eyepieces. I've also enjoyed three German Equatorial Mounts, namely a Celestron AS-GT, an Orion Atlas EQ-G (EQMOD) and a Takahashi NJP Temma 2. I've also had the pleasure of owning and using a high quality isostatic Alt-Az mount, namely the APM/Berlebach GR3-DX (Giro III Delux). And I've enjoyed owning and utilizing all these scopes, mounts and eyepieces.
Observing and Imaging Sites
Over the years, I have had the opportunity to observe and image from a variety of locations. These have included heavily light polluted metropolitan areas (Worli - a downtown Mumbai location, Shadyside - a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA and to a certain extent the Lynntech parking lot and my own backyard - both within the light dome of College Station, TX), semi-dark semi-rural sites (Will Sager's driveway at the edge of College Station, TX and the Texas A&M Observatory past Easterwood Airport outside College Station, TX), and truly dark rural sites (Clinton Lake - outside Lawrence, KS, the Sri Omkarnath Hindu Temple on TX-6 South just a few miles south of College Station, TX, Judy and Charlie Culver's Observatory and Mark Spearman's Regina Caelorum Observatory - both near Wheelock, TX which is a few miles due Northeast of the Bryan/College Station, TX metro sprawl).
As Bryan/College Station grows with time, so does the light pollution that it puts out - such is the nature of progress and growth. I can still remember the first time I set up my Celestron Nexstar 8i XLT scope at the Hindu Temple off TX-6 S. The skies back then were very dark with Zenithal magnitudes easily reaching 6 on most nights and very small light domes from College Station to the North and Navasota to the South. Today, this site is no longer suitable for serious visual astronomy, as the light domes from both College Station and Navasota meet and go past Zenith at this site and zenithal magnitudes rarely reach 4.5 on even the best nights. Plus the Fireworks warehouse that opened up right next door to the temple is always lit up like it is the 4th of July every night which further hampers visual astronomy and even full spectrum imaging from this site.
At the present time, the only dark sky sites which are still within reach of town AND which are still suitable for full spectrum imaging are the Culver observatory and Mark Spearman's observatory and even at these locations, the level of light pollution appears to be on the rise. Please see the pictures of these observatories below. I thank Mark and Judy for letting me observe/image from these dark sky sites. They're blessed to have the means to go out and visually view faint DSOs at will - or whenever the clouds and the moon allow.
As Bryan/College Station grows with time, so does the light pollution that it puts out - such is the nature of progress and growth. I can still remember the first time I set up my Celestron Nexstar 8i XLT scope at the Hindu Temple off TX-6 S. The skies back then were very dark with Zenithal magnitudes easily reaching 6 on most nights and very small light domes from College Station to the North and Navasota to the South. Today, this site is no longer suitable for serious visual astronomy, as the light domes from both College Station and Navasota meet and go past Zenith at this site and zenithal magnitudes rarely reach 4.5 on even the best nights. Plus the Fireworks warehouse that opened up right next door to the temple is always lit up like it is the 4th of July every night which further hampers visual astronomy and even full spectrum imaging from this site.
At the present time, the only dark sky sites which are still within reach of town AND which are still suitable for full spectrum imaging are the Culver observatory and Mark Spearman's observatory and even at these locations, the level of light pollution appears to be on the rise. Please see the pictures of these observatories below. I thank Mark and Judy for letting me observe/image from these dark sky sites. They're blessed to have the means to go out and visually view faint DSOs at will - or whenever the clouds and the moon allow.
The Culver Observatory - Proudly owned and operated by Judy and Charlie Culver
Regina Caelorum Observatory - Proudly owned and operated by Mark Spearman
