I have been ignoring my astronomical observing and astrophotography hobby for a number of years, however Audrey is now approaching the age of interest.

I’m guessing that among my car friends I have at least a few other astrophotography/observing nuts.

I currently have 4 different observing/photographing platforms. My oldest is the Celestron C8 8″ f/10 Schmidt–Cassegrain on an CG5 mount. It has a beautiful Williams Optics 2″ focuser and 90′ mirror. This was one of the first scopes I purchased when I moved to Oregon in the early 90s, and has seen lots of use.

The second one is a Meade 16″ f/4.5 Dobsonian scope, which is the largest mirror I have. This is a scope only for visual observation, not photography., but the mirror has 4 times the light gathering capability of the 8″ scope.

The third one is little 3.25″ Orion Maksutov-Cassegrain scope great for quick visual observations, especially of planets.

The fourth setup is the newest, and is a mount for a standard DSLR camera that has rotational tracking and decent north start alignment capability. It uses a standard tripod setup and can provide star, planet, solar, or lunar tracking for any camera. In my case I use a Pentax K3 which also has a built in star tracking correction algorithm. This is a new setup I just put together, so I’ll post up some pictures once I get it tested out.

Who else digs sky facing optics?