Click the image to see the full resolution version. A version with features labeled is here.

Image was taken with a Williams Optics Megrez 80mm refractor and SBIG ST-8 CCD on a Losmandy G11 mount. Images stacked and processed in CCDSoft.

While I was taking photos of M42, something passed across the field. I’m pretty sure this is a geosynchronous satellite.

Each exposure is 20 seconds long, with about 10 seconds between them. The entire animation covers the span of about 2 and a half two three minutes, depending on the real timing.

The big black thing is the Losmandy G11 sitting on a metal pier. It’s a very nice, heavy duty, and expensive mount (Though not Astrophysics expensive), donated by Pat Peak. On it, the white tube is a 80mm Megrez II Semi-APO built by Williams Optics. The black thing with cooling fins on it hanging off the back is an ST-8 CCD camera, built by SBIG. It contains a primary imaging CCD, a secondary guiding CCD, and a cooling system to chill the CCDs to low temperatures, to reduce noise. It can also be water cooled to help cool it even further, if needed. Pumping water into several thousand dollars of electronics is not my idea of a good time, so I have not tried it.

This setup gives a fairly wide FOV, perfect for Andromeda and Orion.

It is controlled from the laptop on the desk, which contains almost every piece of astronomy software known to man – CCDSoft being the most used. It also has CCDOps and MaximDL, as well as FocusMax, CCDStack, CCDInspector, and lots of other stuff which I may or may not know what they do. It’s usually remote controlled from the warm room, behind the windows, where a wonderful heater keeps you from freezing to death. All hail VNC.

Taken with SBIG ST-8 CCD through a Williams Optics 80mm Megrez II refractor, on a Losmandy G11 mount. Ten 20 second exposures combined in CCDStack.