Alaskan Astronomy

Welcome to Astronomy in Alaska. This is a unique area for astronomy. We have to deal with intense cold in the winter, and no night at all in the summer. I am located far from any cities, and as such, dont have to deal with man made light polution, but often the Northern Lights appear bringing their own form of light polution.

I started with a very modest setup, but am slowly upgrading. My first scope was a Meade, ETX90 90mm Mak-Cassigrain telescope. It was mounted on a Meade DS60 mount. I purchased the DS60 on ebay, removed the cheapo scope off of it, and fabricated a mount for my ETX. This gave me full electronic goto capability for the least cost. Unfortunately, I am discoverd the inaccuracies of the mount are making long exposure astrophotography challenging. The mount as such is a great viewing platform though. Goto accuracy is quite good, and most objects are in the field of view (FOV) of a 25mm eyepiece, if I spend a few minutes doing an accurate allignment at the start of my viewing session.

I have recently upgraded to a used Celestron C8, 8 inch F/10 Schmidt Cassigrain telescope, and mounted it on an old Vixen Super Polaris equatorial mount. I have retrofitted this mount with Meade LXD55 motors to have GOTO capability, and a much more stable, accurate platform for astrophotography than my ETX90

In the following pages, I have documented some of the modifications I have made to improve my system, shown you how to take astrophotos using an inexpensive web cam, and posted a gallery of some pictures I have taken. I also point you to some freeware photo stacking and processing programs. There are also links to others who have done much better than I have, either because they have better equipment, and/or more experience. Astrophotography takes much patience and practice. I am just starting out in this endevour, and hope to continue to improve.