Rob's photos

A mag 10.9 Planetary Nebula in Cygnus. I applied a non-linear stretch during viewing which seemed to bring out more detail, but has made the stars look a bit odd.

A mag 13.3 Planetary Nebula in Cygnus.

A mag 11.0 Planetary Nebula in Cygnus.

A mag 13.6 PN in Cepheus. I tried sum stacking this during viewing as it was so faint.

An observing report from 1982 using a 6" F8 reflector. See article entitled 'The Boley Drive Observatory' for more information.

An observing report from 1982 using a 6" F8 reflector. See article entitled 'The Boley Drive Observatory' for more information.

An observing report from 1982 using a 6" F8 reflector. See article entitled 'The Boley Drive Observatory' for more information.

An observing report from 1982 using a 6" F8 reflector. See article entitled 'The Boley Drive Observatory' for more information.

The setup comprises an Altair Astro RC6 F9 scope plus SX Lodestar mono camera on a Celestron CG5-GT mount. A 0.63x reducer is used for wider fields. Piggybacked on the main scope is a Altair Astro 60mm scope which at F3.75 is ideal for very wide field viewing. Image capture is via Lodestar Live software running in a laptop. This setup allows very faint objects to be viewed on a laptop during an observing session, rather than looking through an eyepiece. This setup shows far more than the naked eye could ever see through an eyepiece.

A second scope which I believe belonged to my local club.

My 6" Newtonian Reflector mounted on a Charles Frank manually driven equatorial mount. My ever supportive parents bought me the scope when I was a teenager. The 'run off' observatory was designed by my dad and we spent several enjoyable days during the summer of 1980 building it. The scope lived quite happily in the observatory for around five years. The bulbous counterweight is in fact a jam jar filled with concrete and painted white!

Taken using the RC6 at F9 using only 1 second exposures on a night with a full moon!