Equipment

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.

This setup is used for visual observing and comprises a Celestron C8 and a Megrez 72mm refractor on either side of a Sky Tee 2 altaz mount.

This setup, comprising the Megrez72 refractor and Horizon 8115 camera tripod, can easily be carried in a rucksack to a remote location and makes a great 'grab and go' setup. The Horizon tripod has been modified to make it easier to use for astronomy - see the Articles section for details.

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!

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