Page Title

METROPOLITAN SKIES
By Dave Trapani

Portable Astro Gear

On this page I have added some photos of the equipment that I take on road trips to
dark sky country. Unfortunately for my wallet this list of equipment seems to be
ever growing:

Here is a list of equipment that
I use inside the observatory:

Telescopes:
Meade LX200 14GPS
Meade LX200 10" Classic
Orion ED80 APO
Televue TV 60 IS
Coronado Instruments Maxscope 40

Cameras:
Lumenera Infinty 2-1
Meade LPI - Lunar Planetary Imager
Meade DSI - Deep Sky Imager
Orion Planetary Imager
Starlight Express MX7C
Starlight Express H9C
SBIG 5-C
Canon Digital Rebel 350XT Modified
by Hutech

Computers/Networking:
Two HP Pavilion PCs - One to
handle autoguiding the telescope
and the other to run several
simultaneous cameras. There is
also a Dell Inspiron laptop that I
take to remote dark sky site field
trips.
There is a wireless G Network from
Linksys. The observatory is linked
to an office inside my house for
remote operation over I/P or
802.11g.

Processing Software:
Adobe Photoshop
Registax 3
Noise Ninja
IMerge
HP Image Zone
AIP 32

Image Capture Software:
Meade Autostar Suite Envisage
MaxIm DL Ver.4
COOA Astrovideo
Starlight Express Image Capture

Navigation Software:
Starry Night Pro
Virtual Moon Atlas

The Meade ETX 90: This little scope is
computer controlled and gives great views
of the night sky. It is perfect when a little
scope is needed and not a lot of set up time
is allowed.

The Maxscope 40 by Coronado
Instruments: I am able to get great
views of the sun in the Hydrogen
alpha wave length. In this
bandwidth, flares and prominences
are visible.

LX200R Ritchey-Chretien 10 Inch

The images above are of the Meade LX200 10" Ritchey-Chretien. A very trusty partner in this
thing we call astro imaging. I have it polar mounted so long duration imaging is possible while
tracking the object.