Observatory Code E17 (Leura)              Long    150d    20'     30"    Lat  -33d    42'    22"    Altitude 950m    Time UT+10h

Observatory Code E19 ( Kingsgrove)    Long    151d     5'     45"     Lat  -33d    56'    51"    Altitude 60m      Time: UT+10h

Leura Observatory instrument (15th February 2010)

Celestron Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope  CGE 1400 (XLT) with Hyperstar option  operating at f/6.5 with SBIG ST8XME(a recent addition) at the visual end of the scope. The resultant image scale was an 0.81"/pixel with a Field of View of 22'X15'. Although the secondary cooling with the additional water cooling seemed to be less effective then the combined cooling of the ST9XE, the overall sensitivity of the resultant image show that the ST8XME was far greater than that of ST9XE. This had not been quantitatively analysed yet but soon. The CGE mount was robust enough to support both the main Scope and the piggy-backed achromatic 120mm refractor guide scope. The observed images was initially rather poor in RA axis. Further trials indicated that only certain portion of the RA gear were poorly machined and contributed to the significant degradation of the image. When the good portion of the gear were aligned to a range of motion from +20deg East to +20deg West, the overall images improved.

The computer system consist of a P4 Dual core 3.2 G.  The telescope and imaging system were controlled using the Sky Commander scripting software. This scripting software operate with both the Sky 6 Professional and CCDSoft  V5 for image acquisition. All images from CCDSoft was pre calibrated with bias, dark and flat field frames. The NexRemote and Tpoint software was used for  remote control and improvement of guiding. Also a custom made Dome control software to control and synchronizes the movement of the dome with that of the telescope. With all the functions worked smoothly, the whole night automatic data acquisition was made possible.

On occasion when the computer froze, resetting was done remotely by means of a telephone activated modular device, eliminating the need for someone to come in and  physically resetting the computer. When the ISP was recently changed to allow a new ADSL2+ connection , the changes was done seamlessly this way.

Due to the dark sky in Leura, when the sky transparency was exceptional , this setup was capable of detecting a 20 magnitude point source such as a star or an asteroid with an exposure of about 5 minutes.

Data transmission to Sydney:

Using ADSL 2+ connection with BigPond we have consistently obtained a connection of 1Mbit/sec upload speed and to a lesser significant was a download speed of 10Mbit/sec. Since the upgrade, the data download and controlling software has been improved dramatically to increase work efficiency by a factor of 8.

Kingsgrove Observatory instrument:

Meade Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope the original LX series mounted on a modified Losmandy Gemini V3 GEM.  The telescope was operating at f/10 where the ST9XE was mounted at the primary focus of the telescope. The resultant image scale when operating at f/10  was 1.59"/pixel with a Field of View of 14'X14'. The CCD camera was both air and water cooled all year round for the purpose of maximum noise reduction in the final images. This system of Losmandy G11 mount with its improved RA worm gear and the camera operating at f/10  worked very well showing nice pin-point images of stars with no signs of tracking errors. An unguided 60 seconds image shows no signs of guiding errors. Longer imaging requires the use of either the internal guiding chip or a guide scope with a dedicated auto-guiding camera.

A 80 mm diameter f/5 ED apochromatic refractor was piggy backed on the main telescope. This refractor was used with the ST 402ME CCD camera operated mainly as an auto-guider. When this system was run under the control of Sky Commander scripting software, CCDSoft V5 imaging software and The Sky pro V6 telescope guiding software, the whole night run could be done unattended resolving the problem with meridian flip. As an autoguider, ST402ME cooling was not critical and no flat fielding was done. The selected auto guided star image was simply auto dark subtracted. This camera was fitted with BVI photometric filters for future use in standard magnitude determination.

The telescope system was housed in a home made rectangular box structure made out of styrofoam by the dow corning company. Its common use was for the  insulating material for houses. However due to its strength and relatively light weight, it was a perfect product for a low cost "observatory". 10 pieces of the 200mmX60mmX30mm dimension Styrofoam were ordered. They were then glued together. As can be seen in the picture,  once one side of the "box" has been removed, the whole structure can be easily toppled over to allow the telescope full access of the sky.  The observatory  had operated well in the harsh Australian summer with no sign of wear.

Inside the confinement of the observatory was also the computer system with AMD Duron processor running at 1.35Ghz. The computer was networked with the laptop inside the house where the activities were observed and if necessary controlled using UltraVNC software as the remote control software.

.     Comet McNaught in the back ground.