Equipment

Small, but good enough for me. And it will take me some time, until I figure out, how to get the best out of it. I use an 8" f/4 Newton from Bresser on an EQ6. A 90 mm Maksutov with 1250 mm focal length is used for guiding. Additionally I have a 6" f/12 Mak for lunar and planetary imaging. Photographs are taken with a Nikon D40x and from June 2010 on with a Moravian Instruments G2-8300 with Astronomik LRGB filters. Planetary imaging is done a Philips SPC900 webcam and an ALCCD 5 camera is used as guider cam. Some additional gizmos came up during April 2012. I got an Nikon D80 and an awesome TIS DBK 21. Also a Lunt 60 mm Ha sun telescope was added.

The following software is used for planning, image acqcuisition and procressing.
  • DeepSkyStacker for stacking the single Frames
  • Fitsworks, AstroArt v4/5 and GIMP for further image processing
  • PHD Guiding for guiding, if done
  • SIMS/SIPS for Image acquisition using the MI camera
  • THELI for high quality data reduction, if I have a lot of time - but it is worth it
  • Deepsky, SkyGazer and Cartes du ciel for observation planning.
  • Sky Safari for iOS