What you can find on this site ?
- A brief history of my interest in astronomy
- Some images taken recently
- Exoplanets observations and results
- Equipments and current set up
- Useful Tips
Why this site ?
Many times, I have been asking myself a lot of questions, such as :
- What is the difference between "full frame" CCD and "Interline" CCD ?
- Why my USB connections just suddenly drops ?
- Why my images looks so fuzzy compared to what I can see on other amator's sites ?
- How to kill just one process under Windows ?
- How to start exoplanets observation ?
- Remote operations : a dream or something affordable ?
This site is intended to share problems and to help other lonely astronomers to find solutions ! (may be !)
Current set-up :
Mount : ASA DDM85 Premium (Mount + Pier)
Main Astrograph : Officina Stellare RILA 400 mm F:5.2 Fl:2080 mm (spot size 4,8 µ)
Finger Lake ATLAS Focuser : 105.000 steps 0.083µ soit 8,7 mm 1mm=12048 steps Actuellement 60000x0;083= 5mm
Control : ATC 02 Advanced Telescope Controler BackFocus optimal : 287 mm Réel : 284.64
Camera : Starlight Monochrome SXVR 694 : 4,5µ 2750 x 2200 pixels (field bin 1 : 0.445 arcsec/pix 20.4 x 16,3 min) Back focus : 17 mm
FilterWheel : Starlight
Bayer LRGB Set :
Flat Field Astrograph : Lichtenknecker D:143 mm F:3,5 L:500 mm
Camera : QHY10 Color Sony ICX494 : 6,05µ 3900x2616 pixels (Field : 2,49 arcsec/pix 162x109 Min - 2,7x1,8 degree))
Finder Scope : Officina Stellare 80mm F:4.1 Fl:330 mm
Finder Camera : Starlight Exview IC 429 : 8,6x8,3µ 752 x582 pixels (champ 10,7 arcsec/pix 67*50 min)
Main Software : ASA AutoSlew, Sequence, The SkyX, MaximDL, PHGuide
Other equipments : Sky Quality Meter Unihedron, Weather Station, All Sky Camera QHY5V + fisheye, GPS xxx,
First period : 1992 - 1995 experiments with photomultipliers and the dual channel photometer at the OHP observatory
I built several photometers at that period : first diode analog photometer, rapidly a digital integration diode photometer, and after several photomultipliers tube based photometers.
Here is my first digital photomultiplier based photometer (prototype) :
You can see from right to left the filter drawer, the fabry lens, the tube itself with its mumetal shield and the tubes socket :
Although there was many design errors (the biggest being the plexiglass used for the case being more or less transparent to the light !!), this photometer gave some astonishing results with a C11, and rapidly, it demonstrated that the effect of sky variation was the main drawback to the quality of the measurements.
With my father in law, we then started a cooperation with a professional astronomer (François Querci) to build a "dual channel photometer" to be installed at the "observatoire de Haute Provence" on an the equatorial table equipped with two celestron C11 in parallel.