Aart's Astronomy Page

Aart owns a Maksutov-Cassegrain 90mm aperture Meade ETX-90 telescope that is used for some occassional late night amateur astronomy in his garden. During the day, solar power is used to charge a portable pack that powers the telescope. The left picture shows the configuration that is used for afocal photography (where the camera lens aims directly at the telescope eyepiece) with a 4 megapixels Sony DSC-P5 digital camera.

Below, sample pictures demonstrate the first attempts to use this configuration in light-polluted Silicon Valley. Pictures are shown in reduced resolution and 'flipped' to match the actual orientation of the photographed objects. By default, a 26mm eyepiece is used. Pictures marked with (high) are taken with a 6.7mm eyepiece.

Please note that this page is privately maintained by Aart Bik.