Equipment

The Abbott Observatory The Abbott Observatory was built in May 2005 and I found it to be one of the best time savers when it comes to setting up and also makes the hobby much more enjoyable. Additional pictures of the observatory construction can be found here.
	TMB130-SS Refractor The primary imaging OTA is a TMB130 mm Signature Series APO refractor. The OTA has an aperture of 130mm, focal length of 910mm, which gives a focal ratio of F/7. I had the stock focuser replaced with a MoonLite high resolution stepper drive for auto-focusing. Mounted on top is the Orion ED80 refractor used as a guide scope or an imaging scope. A Telrad is used for star pointing.
	Shown is the SBIG ST2000-XM w/CFW8 filter wheel mounted on an AO-8 adaptive optics. The camera unit is mounted on a Pyxis rotator.
Scopes shown mounted on a Losmandy G11	Celestron C8-NGT When using a reflector I use a Celestron C8-N. The OTA has an aperture of 200mm and a focal length of 1000mm, which gives a focal ratio of F/5. Some modifications include replacing the stock focuser with a Moonlite Crayford style high resolution stepper drive for auto-focusing. The Celestron ASGT mount is heavy and built solidly. Each inner leg tube is filled with sand and plugged. This makes the mount heavier, but more stable for imaging when using at remote locations. Mount periodic error measurements show the mount needs to be auto guided if long exposure photography is going to be performed. Additional PE improvements were possible from polishing the RA worm and ring gear.

Orion ED80

The Orion ED80 is used as a guide and imaging scope. The ED80 is an excellent scope for the money and provides APO performance for a limited budget. Excellent astro images have been produced with this scope, but there still is one minor QC issue you might have to deal with when you get one. I found the draw tube was not able to hold any weight. I had to modify the draw tube so the details of how it was done can be found here .

Canon Digital Rebel (EOS)

When using the camera with a fast newtonian, very noticeable coma is apparent towards the ends of the field in the images. This made is necessary to purchase a coma corrector. The corrector that has been used successfully on the same OTA that I have is the Baader Celestron Multi Purpose Coma Corrector (MPCC). This item, when mounted the prescribed distance of 55mm from the CMOS sensor, eliminates any coma in the image. I purchased the MPCC at Alpine Astronomical. The camera firmware was modified to enable the mirror lockup feature. The factory installed UV/IR filter was removed and replaced with a cut down Baader UV/IR filter to allow the Hydrogen-Alpha band to pass to further increase red sensitivity. The removal procedures are outlined at Terry Lovejoy's site.

SBIG ST2000XCM Color Camera

A cooled 2MP color camera that's a step up from the uncooled Canon EOS to bring out the fainter image data that was not possible otherwise. An internal guider CCD is also used for more accurate guiding by using the same optical path as the imaging CCD.

SBIG ST2000XM Monochrome Camera w/CFW8 Filter Wheel.

A monochrome version of the XCM color camera. This is used for narrow band imaging as well as LRGB.