"tm" (marc.trypsteen@pandora.be) [14 Dec 03]
Congratulations again with the informative and well-organised website about the LXD55 phenomenon! Scopes are really changing today! What a clear and sharp images through a Schmidt-Newton 10 inch with UHTC coating! Also the superb drive GEM which works faultless and noiseless. I connected it to autostar version 3.1 and controlled it with 'Cartes du ciel' excellent and ! free software (telecope control included). So one can really have a bit of an observatory feeling! Last night it was full moon so I took pictures of it with a simple 2MB digital camera cfr. attachments. Perhaps you can put them in the 'guest LXD55 astroPhotography' paragraph? How a ETX fan can become a LXD55SN addict! cold clear skies and keep up the excellent work, Marc Astro Event Group,Ostend,Belgium Object: Full moon Telescope: LXD55 SN10 Method: Oculair projection Oculair: 26x Plösll Camera: HP318 Image resolution: 1792x1200x24b
same conditions as first, except zoom resolution : 896x600x24b
Brett Edwards (corgi172003@yahoo.com) [11 Oct 03]
Click for full size image (415KB)
Hello... Just browsing through some of thre images sent to you on your site. I thought These were pretty good so I am sending them. I am visiting in the UK at the moment and am using my Yahoo account. These were done with the lxd 55 and SN-8. A webcam was used fot the moon and a FUJI S2 PRO for the orion shot. I have hopefully got an autoguider mod done on the lxd 55 mount as well. The mod is complete and I just want to get home to try it on the stars, not a tourch in my lounge.
"Lynn Laux" (gemmalady@msn.com) [21 Sep 03]
Moon taken with AR-5 and Phillips ToUCam Pro. First night out with this setup and Moon was full, so I looked for an area of high contrast near the terminator.All other information on the photo itself!
jes.sian@summers42.freeserve.co.uk (The Summers Houshold) [27 Jul 03]
Click for full size image
I've jus been looking through the Canon astrophotography section of your excellent ETX site and thought I'd send you some of my efforts. All were taken using a Canon A20 with Scopetronix Digi T adaptor on a Meade LXD55 SC8. The composite moon image was taken on 13th March '03. Canons Photostitch was used to join the individual shots. The photo of the Clavicus crater was taken on 10th May '03 and is probably my highest resolution astrophoto. The smallest features I calculated were about a mile across and well under an arc second in angular terms. Feel free to include any of these on your site if you think they are worthy and keep up the good work.
"Jean Dorais" (Jean.Dorais@pwgsc.gc.ca) [18 May 03]
Here's my first picture of the moon, taken during International Astronomy Day celebrations here in Ottawa, ON Canada. This is through an LXD55 SN10, using a Televue 8~24 zoom ( at the 24mm setting, giving 42 power) and a Mercury 2.1 Mega pixel camera. No special setup, just put the camera to the eyepiece and VOILA!
w mcclure (w_mcclure@hotmail.com) [8 Mar 03]
I'm sending this picture to your site as an example of what someone can do with a LXD55 and pretty simple stuff. I'm a newbie at this, and had been thinking about using my home digital camera and my new 8" LXD55 SN. After looking through all the different options for telescope adapters, I was in Home Depot and ran across a 1 1/2 to 1 1/4 " plumbing adapter for $1.99 I already had a a CLA-1 Olympus Lens adapter (cost around $17), which I had used to attach a telephoto lens to my Olympus C3040 digital camera (3 megapixel camera). The CLA-1 adapter fitted into the plumbing adapter after being shimmed by wrapping a long strip of paper around the tube (I cut this from an old manilla file folder) and tightened down by the hose clamp which came with the plumbing adapter. The other end of the plumbing adapter took a 20 mm lense and shimming with more paper strips, and was tightened down with another hose clamp. Very simple setup -- I think it took me around 15 minutes to put together, although you have to be careful to make sure the lenses don't bump into each other (the Olympus extends it's lens when turned on). I ran out and shot a couple pictures of the moon. This camera settings were focus manually set to infinity at manual 1/4 second, and triggered by hand. Processing on this picture was minimal -- just crop to size with the Camedia software which came with the camera. Considering I live at sea level within about 2 miles of the beach in a major city (Huntington Beach/ Los Angeles area), and this picture was taken literally 30' from a street light I think it shows the power of these scopes and simple consumer gear. I bought my scope through Oceanside Optical and after a minor teething problem have been very happy with it so far. However, I'm the first to confess I haven't had the time to go dig into all the advanced features of the setup yet. Mike here: Be certain to check out the Helpful Information --> Astrophotography page on my ETX Site. Lots of info there.
Dimitris Rakopoulos (liquid@mediaone.gr) [10 Feb 03]
Here comes the first set of photographs I took with my LXD55" 6-AR. I used the Autostar only for sidereal movement. I didn't perform any alignment. I used a Sony DSF-S70 Digital camera with a Scopetronix Digi-T Adapter. All photos were taken from my house in Athens, Greece on 7th of February 2003. [top] 40mm eyepiece, Focal length: 18mm, ISO: 100, Exposure Time: 1/30sec., F-Number: F/2,4, Metering Mode: Center Weighted Average, Exposure Program: Aperture Priority [middle] 40mm eyepiece, Focal length: 21mm, ISO: 100, Exposure Time: 1/30sec., F-Number: F/2,4, Metering Mode: Center Weighted Average, Exposure Program: Aperture Priority [bottom] 32mm eyepiece, Focal length: 21mm, ISO: 188, Exposure Time: 1/30sec., F-Number: F/2,4, Metering Mode: Center Weighted Average, Exposure Program: Normal