The New FSQ-106 telescope is finally here and I took some pictures with it this last winter!  This smaller telescope will give much wider fields of view (less magnification) so I can capture larger objects.

I have a Pyxis rotator to help automatically rotate the camera. This will help when doing meridian flips, to rotate the camera 180 degrees.

I've been using CCDStack to process the images, and wow, this software is awesome. It makes it much easier to create the final image out of the dozens to a couple hundred individual images. The quality of the final image seems to be much higher also. I just added a water pump to cool my camera, I can get an additional -15C of cooling with the water.

Most of my equipment is new, as I sold my old Newtonian. I started researching the equipment in late 2004, and started purchasing it then, I finally got everything by May of 2005.

I bought a used C11, and purchased a MI-250 from Mountain Instruments. My pier is an Astro Pier. The camera is an ST-10XME from SBIG, a 3.2 mega pixel camera. I used a Finger Lakes Instruments PDF focuser and color wheel. The cables run under the floor in a PVC pipe to the computer, which is hooked up by a wireless network connection to the computers inside the house and the Internet.

I have a GE USB hub mounted on the pier, so only one USB cable needs to run from the computer to the pier. The GE USB hub is nice, it's a 7 port hub, with a magnetic base that just sticks on the side of the pier.