The main tube is a William Optics Zenithstar 126 Apochromatic telescope. It's f /7.7 with a focal length of 970mm(3.18ft) and an aperture of 126mm(4.96in). An apochromatic telescope is designed to minimize the differences in refraction angle and focal length for different colors of light.
My telescope mount is motorized and counteracts the motion of the earth during long exposures by simply being aligned with earth's spin axis and rotating at negative sidereal rate, which allows it to track the stars. It's an equatorial mount, which makes it mostly easy to do the alignment - at least for astronomy and exposures less than 60s. The mount also has modes for tracking the Sun and Moon, which are just slightly different rates.
I use an old Nikon D5300 camera. It's 24MP (6000x4000) with a color sensor. I connect it to the telescope as if the telescope is a big telephoto lens. To do this, I use a T-adapter that plugs into the telescope like an eyepiece, and plugs into the camera like a lens. With its 3.92µm pixels, the 4000 pixel dimension covers approximately a 0.93° FOV through this setup. I also have a 2x Barlow lens, which of course zooms in to a 0.46° degree FOV.
When doing solar astrophotography, I have two different solar filters. I have a "conventional" solar filter made of Badder solar film which just blocks 99.99% of the light from the sun. You can see sunspots really well with it, but you can't see anything outside the disc of the sun. I also have a Hydrogen-alpha solar filter, which has a narrow bandpass filter that only lets a small range of light frequencies through. With this, you can see spicules or prominences coming outside of the disc of the sun. To use it, I actually need an energy rejection filter to block the UV and IR spectrum, otherwise the H-alpha filter could get too hot. The H-alpha solar filter internally has a 4x Barlow lens, bringing the setup to f /30. I should be able to use this same filter for seeing solar chromosphere features as well, but I haven't really tried.
Astrophotography Setup:| Type | Model | Price | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Telescope | William Optics Zenithstar 126 | $2100 | Link |
| Mount/Tripod | Losmandy GM8 S - Used | $1200 | Link |
| Camera | Nikon Z7 II | $2000 | Link |
| Camera | Nikon D5300 - Inherited | $0 | Link |
| Camera Adapter | Celestron Nikon T Ring - Inherited | $0 | Link |
| T Adapter | Celestron Universal T Adapter - Inherited | $0 | Link |
| Guide Scope | William Optics 50mm Slide-base Uniguide | $171 | Link |
| Guide Camera | ZWO ASI462MM Monochrome CMOS USB 3.0 Camera | $299 | Link |
| 2x Barlow Lens | Orion 2x Barlow Lens Fully Baffled - Inherited | $0 | Link |
| 2x Barlow Lens | Televue 2x Powermates PMT-2200 | $343 | Link |
| 4x Barlow Lens | Televue 4x Powermates PMT-4201 | $350 | Link |
| Conventional Solar Filter | Badder Solar Film | $80 | Link |
| H-Alpha Solar Filter | Daystar Original Quark (Chromosphere) | $1195 | Link |
| Energy Rejection Filter | Daystar 2" UV/IR Filter | $125 | Link |
Camera-only Astrophotography Setup:
| Type | Model | Price | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lens | Nikon 35mm - Inherited | $0 | Link |
| Lens | Nikon 18-200mm - Inherited | $0 | Link |
| Lens | Nikon 180-600mm | $1900 | Link |
| Adapter | Nikon FTZ II - for using Fmount lenses on Zmount cameras | $250 | Link |
| 2x Teleconverter | Nikon Z TC-2.0x | $600 | Link |
| Tripod & Tripod Connector | Amazon Basics 60-Inch Lightweight Tripod | $26 | Link |
I also use my telescope for astronomy. I like to setup in a park near my house, or in my work parking lot, so I can share the views with other people. For that, I need eyepieces (and some other hardware described below). I looked up eyepiece field of view math and found eyepieces that give a good progression from low-zoom/wide-field-of-view to high-zoom/low-field-of-view. I have the magnifications and FOVs listed in the table below. Keep in mind that a full moon (or the sun) is only about half of one degree across, so 2 full moons would fit right next to each other in a 1° FOV. One special case in my progression of eyepieces is the last one. The TeleVue Ethos line is amazing and gives surprisingly wide FOVs for the magnification. (that's why they're 2.5x the price) My 3.7mm Ethos has more than double the magnification of the 9mm DeLite, but offers an FOV just a little smaller.
When I first put together my telescope build, I didn't have a finder scope, so I would use the 40mm for it's
wide FOV. My telescope has an attachment for a guide scope, which I'm supposed to plug a special camera in that
sends subtle movements to the mount motors to fix any drift from not being perfectly aligned. Now, I typically
use the 18.2mm eyepiece in the guide scope as a finder scope.
I am thinking about getting a guide camera to plug into the guide scope, so I can get pictures with longer
exposures. I now have the ZWO ASI462MM guide camera.
I didn't have the H-alpha filter at first, and when I got it, I also got the 40mm DeLite because the Explore Scientific 40mm doesn't fit in the H-alpha filter, and Daystar recommends a 40mm eyepiece.
eyepieces for astronomy:| Model | Price | Magnification | FOV | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Explore Scientific 40mm Plossl | $210 | 24x | 2.56° | Link |
| TeleVue 40mm Plossl | $155 | 24x | 1.77° | Link |
| TeleVue 18.2mm DeLite | $269 | 53x | 1.16° | Link |
| TeleVue 13mm DeLite | $269 | 75x | 0.83° | Link |
| TeleVue 9mm DeLite | $269 | 108x | 0.58° | Link |
| TeleVue 3.7mm Ethos SX | $658 | 262x | 0.42° | Link |
My telescope kit has a few other bits and bobs that aren't immediately apparent when using. When I take the telescope somewhere, I have to bring the setup in a few parts. I have to collapse the mount and carry it awkwardly because it's ~25lbs plus another 14lbs of counter weights. The telescope actually came with a carrying case with pockets and some extra spots in the foam for more gear. For the eyepieces, I got a case with break away foam. The mount drive battery is external and kinda big, so I just carry it as another component. And the Badder solar filter just lives in the box it came in and that gets carried when I do solar viewing.
When looking through the telescope, it's often hard to see into the end of telescope, so I use a 45° mirror, called a "Star Diagonal" with a Dielectric coating to make it very reflective, and plug the eyepiece into that. My telescope has a rotatable base that can lets the eyepiece get to a more convenient angle.
I got a Moon filter for looking at the Moon at low magnification, when it will be really bright. The moon won't ever be too bright to look at, but it can make your eyes take a while to adjust to looking at dark things again. On this note, I also have a red flash light for when I'm switching eyepieces or looking at the bubble levels built into the mount. I also got a light pollution filter - it's supposed to have a band-reject filter to block common street light colors, but I've barely used it.
When sharing telescope views with people, it's often handy to be able to point out what I'm aiming the telescope at. To do this, I have a class 3B green laser pointer with <50mW output. Green is most visible to the human eye and the laser pointer leaves a visible trail of light in the air when used, so it can pretty accurately point out a particular star. It saves a lot of guess work and explaining where to look for faint stars. However, I always check for planes in the sky before using the laser so I don't blind any pilots, and I'm always careful not to point it at anyone or at the telescope optics. I don't let anyone else use it. The laser I have actually has a lock and a small key to connect the battery. So it can't be used unless "unlocked". This laser is not warm when pointed at my hand, so I'm not going to burn anything with it.
It's extremely hard to take a picture through an eyepiece. And higher magnification eyepieces are harder. I got a cheap phone camera attachment, which can help with precisely aligning a phone camera to the telescope eyepiece. It's totally a gimmick and it's kind of hard to setup, so I don't really let anyone use it, but I've used it successfully a few times and I might get a better one.
The rest of the astronomy/astrophotography setup:| Type | Model | Price | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eyepiece Case | HUL 18in | $47 | Link |
| Star Diagonal | Meade series 5000 2" Enhanced diagonal + thread-on adapter | $150 | Link |
| Battery | Celestron Powertank 84Wh | $82 | Link |
| Moon Filter | Celestron neutral density 1.25" | $20 | Link |
| Light pollution filter | Explore scientific 1.25" CLS Filter | $90 | Link |
| Laser Pointer | Anddicek Handheld Green Stage Light | $21 | Gone |
| Red flashlight | Carson Redsight Pro SL-33 | $7 | Link |
| Phone camera attachment | GoSky Cell Phone Adapter Mount | $20 | Link |
| Mount counter weights 2x | Losmandy 7lb | $50 | Link |
I also use a few other tools. Stellarium [android] [iOS] is probably the tool I use the most - and yes, I bought the paid upgrade. I also use astronomy.tools' excellent FOV calculator.