Panetix observatory

Located at LAT  -37.996   LONG   +145.489 east of Melbourne Victoria Australia

The CCD camera used for the shots before 2010 is a peltier cooled cb 245 filled with argon. It's mounted onto an f4.5 x 33cm Newtonian Telescope.
The scope is a variable Altazimuth/Equatorial mount. Presently it operates as an altazimuth.
Both axes are computer driven using Mel Bartels circuit design and software.

The images between 2010 and 2013 are made on a 508mm reflector (mirror figured by Mark Suchting) using an Opticstar DS-145m-ice camera.
After 2013 I fitted a QSI500 series camera. It has half by one third of a degree, field of vision at prime focus with no added lensing.
Recently (2017) I've had the Pyxis2 field derotator modified to fit onto a Clements focusser and to take a Paracorr II coma corrector, so there is no coma at the edges.
Also I have had the Clements focusser modified to take a stepper motor to control the foccussing.
my friend Nick Booth did all the fine engineering and modifications and can be contacted at ...........

The scope is an Altazimuth with zero backlash reduction gears on both drives and stepper driven.This telescope became operational in early 2011
and is still undergoing some improvements, there have been improvements to the drive electronics, software configuration, tracking and guiding. (Feb 2018).
Guiding is done using a QHY5L II camera using the Pickoff mirror inside the QSI 583 camera.

Aknowledgements to the very generous:
HYPERLEDA astronomical database
NEDS astronomical database
SIMBAD astronomical database
Aladin sky atlas
for making data available.

links to information and images
New Dome Observatory 2011         and scope data NGC Galaxies 1-999 IC Galaxies
1-999
logo
NGC Galaxies 1000-1999
Software, electronics and miscelaneous issues NGC Galaxies 2000-2999 IC Galaxies2000-2999  
Red Shift and Distance to extra galactic objects NGC Galaxies 3000-3999  
  NGC Galaxies 4000-4999 IC Galaxies 4000-4999
  NGC Galaxies 5000-5999 IC Galaxies 5000-5999  
  NGC Galaxies 6000-6999   Star Clusters
Star Fields
Old Observatory and Scope data NGC Galaxies 7000-7999   Comets
Nebulae