HOME OBSERVING SITE

My hometown is Zoetermeer (Sweet Lake) in the western part of the Netherlands near the cities of The Hague and Rotterdam. Due to heavy light pollution, deepsky astrophotography can only be done with special light pollution suppression or narrow band filters. It amazes me what can be achieved with modern CCD-photography and proper filtering though. The best time for taking exposures is between 8.00 pm and midnight, because then the bright assimilation lights of the greenhouses nearby are shut off. I live in the old part of the town in a house built in 1903. The previous residents constructed a kitchen extension with a terrace on top. It is faced to the southeast, from which I have an almost clear view from the eastern to the western horizon. The pole star can also be seen just over the roof of the house.

Pursuing modern astrophotography, means a lot of wires as you can see in the images of my setup. There is one for powering the mount, one for the autoguider, one for the CCD-camera, one for the anti-dew heaters, one for the hand lamp and one for the laptop. Then there are wires from several control boxes: two to the tracking motors, three to the anti-dew heaters, one to the autoguider, two to the CCD-camera and two to the mounts digital drive system. Last but not least, there is an USB-cable that connects the camera with the laptop. Because all this equipment drains a lot of current, I use a 10 AMP, 13.8V DC regulated power supply. Unfortunately, I don't have my telescope permanently mounted in an observatory, so I have to connect and disconnect everything each observing session.

My old workhorse for astrophotography, a Losmandy GM-8 mount seen in the pictures above, has been replaced by an Astro-Physics Mach1 GTO in June 2009. The tripod I use is a very rigid wooden tripod by Baader Planetarium. Note that I have drilled holes in the wooden terrace tiles so the tripod stands solid on the roof.

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