Equipment


I started astronomy with a second hand Meade ETX60, a small 60mm motorized GOTO refractor telescope. I then decided to go for the biggest model of the same ETX serie, the ETX125, a 125mm Maksutov-Cassegrain GOTO telescope, which I bought new. I wanted to go bigger but stay portable, since I live at the third floor and my observations sites are either from my flat, with the telescope simply on a window sill, or from my roof which I can access through a trap and ladder, or outside the city if I take my car. I first made the pictures with my Nikon Coolpix 990, coupled to the telescopes via Scopetronix Digi-T adapter. More recently, I do my planetary (and sun/moon) imaging with a webcam Philipe Toucam Pro II. I also recently bought a canon EOS300d that I used for the moment mainly for widefield (piggy backed on my ETX125). Finally, since the total eclipse of the sun in 2006, I became fascinated by the sun and I acquired a Coronado PST to look at the sun in hydrogen alpha.

Here are a couple of pictures of the 2 telescopes:

And the sort of setup I have on my roof:

The Canon EOS300D piggybacked on the ETX125:

And the Coronado PST also piggybacked on the ETX125: