Category Archives: equipment

asa ddm 85 fix

Posted by Erwin Kats on September 4, 2010 – 16:07
Filed under equipment

last night i was having troubles with the USB connection to my asa ddm 85.
after asking Karel Teuwen, a belgium astrophotographer ( he also got a ddm 85 )

i heard he also had troubles with the connection, his reason was the USB-serial converter cable.
yesterday i did a small fix to it, using a big piece of tape i was not getting any problems.

but i will order a new convertor because its not reliable enough for me !

QHY 5 guider camera

Posted by Erwin Kats on August 29, 2010 – 12:01
Filed under equipment

After looking the stats of my website i see that there are alot of people looking for the QHY 5 camera.

in my last post about the qhy 5 on my website i was writing about the cmos.dll that you had to copy and paste etc etc.
in the mean while Tom from www.astrosoft.be has made ascom drivers for the QHY camera’s.
now the usage of the QHY 5 is very easy.

just install ACOM it self, and the ascom driver from Tom’s website and you can select the QHY 5 in PHD Guiding.

Now when you go to PHD Guiding and find your camera, you click ASCOM v5 Camera.
then you will get a drop down menu with the camera you would like to select through the ascom driver.

here a photo, click on it to enlarge it.
(for me also the QSI is availble)

QSI 583 WS

Posted by Erwin Kats on June 30, 2010 – 07:53
Filed under equipment

last wednesday my Quantum Scientific Imaging 583 WS arrived.
this ccd camera with an Kodak KAF 8300 chip has an internal filterwheel ( mine has an 1,25” filter holder so 5 filter can take place )

at the moment i only got a 7nm Halpha filter from baader planetarium.

the store were i ordered the camera www.telescoop.nl from Guy de Nooij was so kind to send the camera just before i went to an astroholiday to southern france.
i wish there were more stores so kind and with such a good service

more photo of the camera can be found here.

asa ddm 85 #2

Posted by Erwin Kats on June 21, 2010 – 16:33
Filed under Astrophotography, equipment

After all the shitty damages, bad service etc from asa here a first pic.
after a 10 star pointing file i did a 10 minute unguided exposure with the vixen r200ss( 8” F4 ,800mm ) ( still out of collimation )
M51 has been cropped, photo is made on iso 1600 with eos 40D

ASA Direct Drive Mount 85

Posted by Erwin Kats on May 29, 2010 – 18:28
Filed under equipment

today i picked up my *edit* Astro Systeme Austria Direct Drive Mount 85.

well, that sounds like something professional don’t ya think?
the company ASA makes some stuff in the astronomy world.

their custumor service sucks so hard that i have trown away my vacuum cleaner.

but here a picture of the arrival of my ddm 85.

More pics van be found here

Sony DSC HX5

Posted by Erwin Kats on May 22, 2010 – 11:07
Filed under equipment

Today I received my Sony DSC HX5 black.
when i saw the specs on this camera I was thinking, i want it !
ive been testing it for a hour or 2 now and i love it, the HD movie function is great, indoors the sound is awesome also.
the photos look great, the panorama function works very good as well.
this cam will be in my pocket for each day of the week from now on !.

see some pics of the cam Here

new head

Posted by Erwin Kats on July 10, 2009 – 19:25
Filed under equipment

14 days ago i received my new Manfrotto 808 RC4 head
the head is very steady, and the axis can be fixed very good.
only disadvantage i got at the moment is that i can’t point higher then 30 degrees

WMR-200

Posted by Erwin Kats on June 7, 2009 – 19:55
Filed under equipment

since last week i got semi professional weather station.
its an oregon scientific WMR-200

  • Measures temperature, humidity, wind chill, wind speed, wind direction, barometric pressure and rainfall.

    • First shot after accident in france

    Posted by Erwin Kats on May 31, 2009 – 20:10
    Filed under Astrophotography, equipment

    at the end of march 2009, i was in french for a astro trip.
    on a morning my losmandy G-11 + vixen R200SS and guidescope were blown to the ground by the wind.

    i still can’t photograph with the r200SS because i need to order a new set of OTA rings.

    friday 29th of may, i was photographing with my eos 40D + 70-200 2,8 IS on 70mm F4,5 to NGC 7000 ( north america nebula )
    ive captured 2 hours and 16 minuts in 4minut sub exposure stacked in DeepSky Stacker.

    a crop

    QHY5 guide cam

    Posted by Erwin Kats on February 28, 2009 – 17:35
    Filed under equipment

    QHY 5 1/2'' chip

    Wednesday the 25th-02 my QHY5 guider camera arrived.

    *on this link a update about the qhy 5, you can now use ascom !*

    I wanted to give it a try to see if it would work.
    after installing the stock drivers from QHY’s own website. i was only able to try the QHY 5 in HDcap software.
    but for autoguiding you need to run the camera in PHD guiding, Maxim, guidemaster etc.
    after trying alot of different configurations ( and 3 days later ) i still didn’t had the camera working in the guiding software.

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