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.
