I'm semi-retired on a reduced schedule. Plenty of time for astrophotography when the weather is good. My scopes include a C5, C9.25 XLT, C6 XLT, FSQ106N, OMC300, Mewlon 250,
Esprit 80, Esprit 120, and a recently arrived Stellarvue SVX140T on a Paramount MYT mount. I mostly use cooled astro cams (ZWO ASI533 both color and mono versions , and ZWO ASI6200MC) or Canon DSLRs. I also image with a variety of Canon and NiKKor super-telephoto lenses. My mounts include an iOptron CEM26, Sky Watcher EQ6-R Pro, Losmandy G11 Gemini 1, a manual non-tracking GEM, and a Paramount MyT.
Recently, in addition to deep sky imaging, I've gotten back to doing some lunar and planetary imaging again after a long hiatus. I'm also starting to explore imaging comets and the occasional asteroid. To round things out I've also recently bought a DayStar Quark chromosphere unit for solar imaging in Halpha (which has nothing in common with Halpha used in deep sky imaging and uses an etalon with a bandwidth of under 1 angstrom unit). For the moment I am using a 120mm f5 achromat with the Quark unit but also plan to use it with my Esprit 80.
For visual I enjoy using binocular telescopes and have an Oberwerk BT-82 XL ED and an Oberwerk BT-127XL SD that I use with and without twin L3 white phosphor image intensified night vision monoculars. The latter greatly increases the depth of visible magnitudes of stars and deep sky objects in my Bortle 6 sky and they can be used with long pass IR filters or H-alpha filters for cleaner views with better contrast and in the case of H-alpha to enhance emission nebulae. I use my telescopes almost exclusively for imaging, preferring the large binoculars for visual observation (except for the moon and planets). My binocular telescopes use Oberwerk TR3 or Monfrotto161 MK2B tripods and either an Oberwerk 5000 pan head, an Oberwerk XL- 280mm fork mount with bayonet adapter, and likely quite soon an iOptron HAZ31 harmonic drive.
I started in this hobby years ago by developing my own prints and now that things have gone digital, I persevere trying my best to learn the software associated with image acquisition, calibration, stacking and processing. Recently I'm also "getting into" astronomical spectography.
I've been using the StarAnalyzer 100 and 200 spectral gratings and have added a 3.8 degree prism. Recently I purchased the DADOS spectrograph by Baader Planetarium and several gratings of different resolutions. I've also purchased a Shelyak Instruments ALPY 600 spectograph and the various calibration and guiding modules designed for it. I plan to be using them regularly starting the winter of 2023 into early 2024.
Job
physician
Hobbies
Chess, amateur astronomy, classical piano, aviation
