History of Imaging
On this page we are including some members' telescopes, set-ups, equipment, issues and interesting situations, past and present.
Over the years, many of us change our astronomy pursuits and interests; hopefully we can reflect these here.
Members are warmly invited to contribute to this section.
~ Text and images below by Martin Gill and Andy Relf ~
A visit to a Dark Site can be an exciting experience and can offer great results - if you can find the energy after a day's work!
It can get cold at night with frost forming on a telescope, so you have to wrap up warm. The alternative is to have a warm room like a shed or observatory. The new equipment can now do a wirefree set-up or lan connections to a router, via computers ... so you can stay in the warm, and control from indoors.
There are alternatives like taking a set-up on a camping trip for darker skies, as so many towns now suffer from light pollution – especially London and surrounding cities.
In the past, it was thought that larger scopes were always going to give better images. This is a 14.5 inch F4.7 newtonian on a custom fork equatorial mount, in the mid 1990s. The small refractors are better for some images as they provide a wider field of view of the night sky … shows how opinions change over the decades!
A dome observatory in the garden is always a great addition to an astronomer's list of gear. This dome gave 20 years of service. It was built from plans published in Astronomy Now magazine.
Altair Astro Ritchey Chretien 8 inch and 10 inch versions
Some of the members' scopes - getting ready for a night of observing and astrophotography.
Hoping to get the perfect picture
When only the biggest scope will do!
Ready for a night of astrophotography
A custom-built 19.5 inch dobsonian telescope.
This could collapse down for transporting to a dark site.
A solid EQ6 mount, a fast F5,8 inch Newtonian with a 70mm guide scope and a film Dslr before ccd cameras came out.
When the dobsonian ruled the observing field!