deepskywalker.com

About

I have been interested in Astronomy since I was a young. I owned two small scope’s while in high school back in the early 70’s. My son surprised me with a big telescope in 2004, an Orion XT10” Intelliscope. This is a great telescope and with the Object Locator it is even better. This is a quote from Orions web site,

”These Dobsonian telescopes are compatible with a state-of-the-art computerized object locating system that allows any stargazing enthusiast from entry-level to expert to find and view thousands of celestial objects with pushbutton ease.”

I would certainly agree. When I first started using the scope, I didnt have the luxury of the Object Locator. I installed longitute and altitude scales on the mount and used a program called DobJ. I would highly recomend this system for anyone wanting to speed up there observing time in locating objects if they own a Dobsonian mounted scope. Ofcourse this is not to take away the skills needed to navigate the night sky, but for those like myself whose observing time my be limited it enables one to view more objects in any givin time.

I have included in my telescope equipment a 80mm short tube refractor, 100mm Orion Refractor, a 8” Meade Scmidt Cassegrain and Meade 90mm long tube Refractor. I still have a Focal 3”Reflector that my Dad bought for me when I was in high school. I purchased a Meade LXD 55 Equatorial Mount with Computerized GOTO capabilities. With this feature I use this mount primarily for Astrophotography. I have another Equatorial Mount I use sometimes with my 80mm short tube Refractor for Astrophotography. The 90mm Meade came with a ALTI- AZ computerized Autostar mount. I do not use it for astrophotraphy as the mount is not sturdy enough but is fine for visual observing. I started Astrophotography with a Nikon Coolpix 995. Although this camera isn’t designed for astrophotography it features make it easy to adapt. I had tryed a couple of web cams for planetary work and now I have Phillips PCVC740K ToUcam. I purchased a Meade Deep Sky Imager a couple of years ago and this is my primary camera for deep sky imaging. I will be adding more info and images as time allows. My previous site was hacked and I lost all my files. I had a running log of my astrophotography efforts. I still have all of the images that were on the other site and will be posting them. I hope this site will provide encouragement to anyone who has an interest in astronomy.

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