Davoud wrote:
I have graduated from doing astrophotography with a Canon 20D to doing
it with an SBIG STL-11000M. Having "graduated," I find myself back in
kindergarten.

Here http://www.davidillig.com/ast-stl-firstlight061125.shtml is the
first photo I have ever made with a CCD camera.

RMOLLISE replied:
Nice shot, Davoud. What was the mount?

Thank you very much. It's a Losmandy G11/Gemini on a Le Sueur pier
which, in turn, is bolted to a foundation of 1,600 lbs of concrete. It
is quite solid. The counterweight shaft and part of the pier are
visible in the bottom photo at
http://www.davidillig.com/observatory15.shtml. At the moment the
Losmandy holds the Tele Vue 76 and a Questar Duplex, but I'm going to
put the 8" Meade back in place of the Questar, because I miss having
the Q readily available for travel and terrestrial use.

Incidentally, the observatory was built with a Meade fork in mind. The
geometry is wrong for the GEM. What did I know? This is not important
from a dome-control viewpoint, as I move the dome manually (for now.)
But the pier is about 15 cm due south of the center of the dome, which
is also the center of the building. There is very little room to
squeeze behind the 'scope on the south side, even less with cameras
hanging off the back. That didn't matter with the Meade fork, as I did
not observe or image in the northeast, north, or northwest -- but now I
do.

Bottom line: in the spring my wife and I are going to replace the
observatory building. The new structure will be rectangular (not as
pretty as now, but more practical) and somewhat larger. And the pier
will be in the center of the building. Of course, it's the building
that's moving, not the pier! I plan to pre-fab the new building in the
garage and add the additional foundation posts prior to demolition in
order to minimize down time.

Davoud

--
usenet *at* davidillig dawt com