My "Tak Stack" from back in the day! And cows.

At this time I decided to get more serious about astrophotography and picked up a 16 inch f4.5 Newtonian with equatorial mount and I haven't stopped since! The film days were wonderfully simple compared to the more rigid requirements of digital imaging and so the equipment has evolved much over the years. Most of what I currently use is off the shelf, very little is home-made any more. Quite a contrast to the 60's and 70's when much of what people used was home made. There is now so much commercially available equipment that the combinations are virtually endless. There are now visual and photographic options available in almost any price bracket - you just need to decide how much you are willing to throw at this hobby! Be warned that once you start into this hobby, you will never be satisfied with what you have! There is always something bigger and better just around the corner.

I do not have a back yard so all of my imaging sessions have been in the field. It is great to be out under the dark Alberta skies but the 200 foot trip to and from the car with all the equipment gets harder as I get older! However, I do have a small front yard with a deck. My townhouse is two stories high so limits my sky to straight up to the north. Better than nothing! With go-to computerized telescope mounts and heavy light pollution filters I can do some shoots from home. A roll-out light blind helps with both neighbour's lights and curious walkers by.
I am constantly changing my arsenal of equipment, here is the current lineup as of December 2025.

• Meade DS16A (Sold) How it all began! This shot was from March 1986, not long after Halley's Comet left our skies. 240 pounds of imaging bliss. It required a '73 Chevy truck to get it out of the city to use but I was in my mid 20's then and didn't care. By the end of 1986 it was housed in a 9 foot diameter dome in the backyard and I was already shooting hypered film and using a dry ice camera.
  
  

  Me and the mighty Meade DS16 Newtonian in south Calgary

  
  
• Astro-Physics 900QMD. Old faithful! An older, non-goto German equatorial mount of exceptional rigidity and accuracy which I bought used in 2006. I use this more with the larger equipment or for imaging systems of longer focal length. A superb piece but heavy to carry into the field. Currently it is used on my Losmandy tripod. My 900 is equipped with the optional polar alignment scope. A must have piece of equipment! Polar alignment can be achieved in just a few minutes, though I still confirm alignment with software now or using a Polemaster.
  
  

  900QMD pictured with Vixen VC200L Scope

  
  
• Sky-Watcher EQM-35 Pro Bought new in 2021, purchased with the goal of being able to take photos from home, or at the very least, testing out those waters without spending too much! One of the problems with taking pictures from the city is that light pollution masks all the stars you need to find anything! With a go-to mount, once it is aligned with the few stars that you can see, it can move under its own power to any target you wish. This really simplifies things! The other problem is of course light pollution masking your targets. However, there are "narrow band" filters on the market which block everything except the light from some types of nebula so it is possible to shoot those from in town. Exposure times are long but for small telescopes and telephoto lenses, the accuracy of the drive on this relatively inexpensive mount is up to the task.
  More info from SkyWatcher is here.
  
  

  Sky-Watcher EQM-35 Pro

  
  
• ZWO AM5N Harmonic Mount Second generation of ZWO's harmonic mount. A radical departure from the traditional German Equatorial mount I have been using for about 40 years now! Fully software controlled and no longer requiring a counterweight unless the scope is approaching the rated weight limit of the mount. This mount requires more frequent guiding corrections than a traditional worm gear system but otherwise works extremely well - and is very light and compact. Something us older folks appreciate! However, after 8 months of use it started acting up. Every 288 seconds there would be an enormous spike in tracking which would ruin photos. It took over 3 months for ZWO to agree with my vendor to take it back for repair! Not a great end user experience at all but at least there is a 2 year warranty. I currently do not have this mount but am very much hoping to get it back in full functional form in the near future. I will update this page as things progress. A really nice mount - when it works! ZWO's AM5N web page is here.
  
  

  ZWO AM5N with Askar SQA55

  
  
• SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro I picked this mount up used in summer of 2025 when my new ZWO AM5N started acting up and couldn't be trusted for the summer star parties. Back to tried and tested "old school" tech! Heavy for sure but lighter than my Astro-Physics mount by a fair amount. And it is full go-to, software controlled so I can use it from the city. This will probably replace the Astro-Physics at some point for use with my longer and heavier scopes. This mount has become almost a classic with other astrophotographers! Excellent bang for the buck - it just works and that's worth something for sure!
  
  Mount is pictured here on my deck at home showing my roll-out blind. More info from SkyWatcher is here.
  
  

  EQ6-R Pro with Tak FSQ106N

  
  
• Losmandy G-11. (SOLD) Stepper motor version, non-goto. An excellent, lightweight and compact system! I used this when portability was important or when I didn't have the energy to drag the AP900 to the car. A great match for smaller refractors in the 4" range such as my FSQ-106. Due to the coarse step interval of the motors (1/2 arc second per step) this mount had proven to be a problem with long focal lengths where this 1/2 arc second step "drift" could cause guiding problems! If upgraded to the continuous drive DC servo motors, this problem would vanish. This wasn't a problem with focal lengths under 600mm. Despite this, it is a great mount and beautifully made in the USA.
  
  

  Losmandy G-11 pictured with the Vixen VC200L and my old, yellow Datsun truck

  
  

• Astro-Physics AP130EDT What a beauty! I acquired this scope in January 2011 from a great guy in Vancouver. This is the less common f8.35 version of the scope made in 2002. The longer focal length gives about the best resolution in images that can be achieved with typical seeing conditions around Calgary. Visually and photographically this system is stunning! Visual first light showed Jupiter's moons as different sizes. An excellent scope for smaller targets like galaxies and compact nebula but it is photographically "slow" at f8.35 requiring long exposure times.
  
  

  Astro-Physics AP130EDT pictured with 900QMD and Monolith pier

  
  
• Takahashi FSQ-106N - my first refractor imaging system. This quadruplet fluorite system is an amazing little rig! Much heavier than it looks, it boasts a 4" focuser for heavy camera loads and a flat photographic field. It also has a "fast" focal ratio of F5 giving shorter exposure times than my other scopes. Razor sharp images both on images and visually. Acquired spring of 2005. This was the last of the fluorite versions of this scope with the ED series taking over. Some of my favourite images have come from this scope, highly recommended!
  
  

  Takahashi FSQ on G-11 Mount

• TMB 175 (sold) - the crown jewel in my collection! A superb triplet 7" f8 refractor equipped with a 3.5" FeatherTouch focuser system. It produces excellent images and visually is a treat with its high contrast, colour free images. The drawbacks are its large size and weight approaching the limits of my 900QMD mount. I get a good workout lugging it to and from the car though! Due to its physical properties, it only gets out when I set up for several days at a time such as at a star party. Equipped with the FeatherTouch digital focusing system. Acquired summer 2008. Ultimately this scope presented such a physical challenge to use as a "portable" imaging system that it rarely got out. Sold to a robotic observatory where I hope it is getting used much more! But it sure was fun while it lasted.
  

  "The Big one" dwarfing the imager!

• 8" Celestron Schmidt Camera (in storage) - I bought this used in 1995 from Quasar Optics as a medium field, fast photographic system for film. This was a purely photographic telescope! You inserted a single chip of 35mm film which was then curved to match the focal plane of this scope. Which meant that you had to process your own film, even in the field, before humidity ruined the image when using hypered film. So, I developed a reputation for doing that at star parties! Even on mountaintops like Mt. Kobau. Why would you do this? It was a 300mm focal length scope, 200mm in diameter or f1.5. You could get very deep images in just minutes!
  
  It is pictured here with a 6x30 finder to locate the field, a 4.5" f8 guidescope, the DS-16 mounting. Which, by this time, I had upgraded it to a 9.3" Mathis drive gear and had designed and built my own electronics for the drive system. And yes, it was fully compatible with the pictured ST4 guide system. Some of my favourite film images came from this setup. Sadly, as the focal plane is curved, it can't be used with flat CCD or CMOS sensors so it sits in storage for now.
  

  The 8" Schmidt camera setup for film

• William Optics Redcat 51 V2 (sold) - Once I made the move to digital imaging I really missed the medium field of my Schmidt camera. Some amazing scenes in that 4 x 6 degree field and digital sensors that were affordable were all smaller than 35mm film. So, the other option is to reduce the focal length of the scope to get the same field. William Optics Redcat 51 was my first venture into this area. With the larger pixels size (5.4 microns) of my SBIG camera all was good! Pictures, though a bit tighter field than I wanted, were getting close to what my Schmidt could capture. Then I bought one of them new fangled CMOS cameras with 3.76 micron pixels and suddenly the Redcat didn't look so good. There was something really wrong with the optics so as the warranty period ended, I got an RMA and sent it back to Taiwan for repair. It didn't take long to get it back and they paid return shipping so that was nice. The optics came back better for sure but didn't meet the standards that I was looking for with the higher resolution CMOS sensors. So I sold it, with full disclosure to a friend using 5.4 micron pixels. Perhaps newer renditions of this scope have better quality control? Maybe not. Having been in the hobby this long I know what I want and this didn't meet my expectations, sadly. So, lost money on shipping to Taiwan and in the sale. Bought summer 2021. More info here.
  

  How to take astrophotos during a hurricane!

• Askar SQA55 - The Redcat 51 really whetted my appetite for that medium field of the Schmidt camera! So this was round two at getting those results. The Askar SQA55 was getting rave reviews as "the sharpest optics ever" from multiple Youtoob reviews so I took a gamble! It is a quintuplet Petzval flat field imaging system giving the sharpest stars of any of my systems. By this time I also had an APS-C sized sensor so finally was able to almost duplicate that Schmidt field. Well, the scope didn't disappoint! Wow. What an amazing performer! I'm so glad to have done this. I don't know if a full sized 35mm sensor is in my future or not but this scope and the FSQ106N can both give excellent results full frame. If you are looking for something around 264mm focal length this has to be on your shortlist! More info here.
  

  Askar SQA55 ready for a night on the town.

• Vixen VC-200L - An older "white tube" version of this scope. I purchased it back in 2004 when I was shooting film cameras. The lack of a corrector plate, external focuser and built-in flattener made it a better imaging system to me than any of the commercial Schmidt-Cassegrains on the market. It generally works very well but the thick spider vanes add more diffraction to the image than I like. The F9 focal ratio also means that exposure times are very long. The longer focal length of 1800mm means that you need a really solid mount to effectively use this scope! I don't use this scope much but it has its place in my line-up. It works nicely with faster CMOS cameras even with severe light pollution filters from the city for small targets.
  
  

  The Vixen, on the 900QMD mount.

  
  
  

• My latest project! - Making a "Smart telescope". One of the latest trends in photographing the night sky of late has been the explosion of so called "smart telescopes". Little robotic imaging systems that need nothing more than power, clear skies and a phone. Great! It puts imaging into the hands of almost anyone! However, at this time the quality of the images isn't so hot. Not bad if you stack like 900 frames to reduce noise but a cooled, quality dedicated camera can do a much better job. So, as I have drifted into the ZWO walled garden that only supports ZWO hardware, I have a bunch of gear sitting around looking for a purpose. Yes, some of it is old but 100% functional! But big and heavy.
  
  So, I decided to piece together a system that's light (can carry in one piece) and can be taken to the car in a couple of trips. Something that I can even take to the car in winter when the parking lot is sheet ice. Recently All-Star Telescope offered a deal on the SharpStar 61EDPH-III triplet ED scope and threw in a three element field flattener good up to full frame for half price! Couldn't resist. A bit slower at f5.9 but with a 360mm focal length it will give more detail than most smart scopes. For a sensor I have my SBIG STF8300 mono camera from 2012 with LRGB filter wheel, a really nice camera. It has an off-axis guider so my spare ASI120mm guide camera fits in there. I also have a WandererAstro power box to keep wiring on the scope and a StellarMate X controller to run the system - all perched on the mighty SkyWatcher EQM35 Pro. Everything can be run using just an iPad or phone. Easy peasy!
  
  Yes, this looks way more complex than a Smart Scope. But, the camera/scope stays together in one bag, tripod and counterweight in another. Done. We get so many iffy nights now due to climate change, this setup should allow me to take advantage of those nights. if it clears - great! I can get some good images. If not then I didn't waste a lot of energy. Good clear nights will warrant one of the other systems for sure. But this should give superior results to any smart scope at this time. Stay tuned for results! I may ultimately have to switch to an all-in-one Air camera system to reduce the complexity.
  
  

  Smart Scope under construction

Wow, this has been a long list! In 1987 I acquired an Olympus OM1 and lenses as my primary astro camera. Around that time I also bought a Canda Technologies cold camera. This device used dry ice to cool the film to about -40C to improve film performance and colour balance. There are a few examples of how well this device worked scattered throughout the photo collections on this website. Most film images were taken with the OM1 or the later addition - the OM2. In 1992 I added an 8" f1.5 Schmidt camera to the collection. This photographic telescope bent film into a convex shape and brought wide field, high resolution images to the fold. With this camera I used primarily Kodak hypersensitized Tech Pan 2415 film. This camera filled the gap between camera lenses and prime focus with telescopes nicely. There are image examples scattered throughout the photo galleries on this web site. With a focal ratio of f1.5 this camera was incredibly fast!

• ST-4 (sold)

  I bought this camera in 1995 from my doctor, Dr. Fegler of Bragg Creek, Alberta. (R.I.P.) This unit was built primarily as an auto-guider and was based on the tiny TC-211 CCD sensor from Texas Instruments. I no longer own this camera. It wasn't all that great as an imaging camera though I did get a few images from it.

• ST237a (sold)

  In March 2002 I started down the dark side with the purchase of my first CCD camera. From SBIG in California, the ST237a was my first stab at digital. The camera wasn't huge at 640 x 480 pixels but it was affordable. It showed me that a: my equipment wasn't good enough and b: you can't guide accurately enough manually for digital! Hence another bout of equipment upgrades from the DS16 mount purchased 1986, starting with the Losmandy G-11.

• ST-8 (sold)

  The ST237 I eventually added a colour filter wheel to in order to take colour images but in addition to the small pixel count, the camera sensor was rather noisy. My first upgrade was made possible by an offer from Brady Johnson who had an excess of ST-8 cameras and a need for an ST237 as a guider. So began my first self-guiding camera from SBIG. The guide chip was only the tiny ST4 TC211 chip but let me guide so much more accurately than by hand. Plus, there was no flexure caused by using a separate guide telescope. The CCD wasn't very efficient in the blue and image transfer was very slow via the parallel port on a laptop but it got the job done with a whopping 1500 x 1000 pixels. I was happy with this camera until Jim Janusz posted an ad on Astromart...

• ST-8XME (sold)

  Woo-hoo! This was it! a serious CCD astro camera with enhanced blue sensitivity and (ironically) an ST-237 chip for guiding. I used this camera for several years and was very happy with its performance. You will find many images from this camera in the galleries. It was replaced when I got wind of Stuart Heggie selling his ST-10XME.

• ST-10XME (Sold)

  A much bigger sensor at 2000 x 1500 pixels, how could I go wrong? This camera was stunning. The sensor was amazingly quiet and was my first non-blooming gate camera, incredibly sensitive. Approaching 90% quantum efficiency, this was one of the more sensitive sensors from Kodak. I only recently sold this camera and had added almost every available accessory to it including the 10 position filter holder. However, the blooming of this camera meant that some targets were simply not easy to shoot! For example, shooting the Orion Nebula meant that I had to manually de-bloom 45 individual exposures, plus the exposure times were so short that I was unable to shoot long enough for good s/n ratio in the fainter parts of the nebula. And so I started my search for something to compliment the ST10. The big plus with this camera was that it had a 2nd CCD sensor - another ST237 - built in, used exclusively for guiding. This really simplified setup!

• STF-8300M

  In November 2011, SBIG announced the MK. II version of their budget camera based on the 8.3 M-pixel Kodak sensor. This camera has small (5.4 micron) pixels with shallow wells making it a good match for my smaller scopes in addition to telephoto lenses. It was also anti-blooming making targets with bright stars in the field possible again. I ordered one with the 5 position filter wheel, leaving narrow band something for the ST-10XME to deal with. I never was able to get a flexure-free guide scope working with any of my scopes, so I now use the dedicated SBIG off-axis guider for this camera. It was purchased primarily for wide to medium field imaging leaving the ST-10XME for long focal length work.

  

  The STF-8300M from SBIG

• ZWO ASI533MC-Pro

  By 2020 or so it became apparent that CCD cameras were fading away and CMOS cameras were becoming a force to recon with, with digital cameras. However, they had issues that I didn't want to deal with. Many of the cameras at that time were only capable of outputting 12 bit data instead of 16 bit leading to lower resolution with greyscale. On top of that they all suffered from something called "amp glow". The amplifier reading the data out of the chip could produce a funky glow on one side of the image which CCD cameras did not have. But, Starvis 2 sensors by Sony eliminated the glow and came out with 14 and 16 bit sensors. So, to test the waters I picked up a one-shot-colour camera with the Starvis 2 IMX533 sensor in 2023, the ZWO ASI533MC Pro, which was also electrically cooled.
  
  This camera exceeded my expectations! Good sensitivity, low noise, high resolution from the tiny 3.76 micron pixels. There are many images from this camera on the site, I plan to keep this for a while unless I upgrade to a larger APS-C format version! Click for more info

• ZWO ASI533MM-Pro (Sold)

  It quickly became apparent that the CMOS cameras had indeed reached a level of performance that met my expectations. So, I took the plunge and picked up a monochrome version of the IMX533 sensor. What a great camera! This time around I purchased the larger 36mm filters - just in case I ever wanted to upgrade to a larger sensor down the road. This included 3nm narrow band filters in hydrogen alpha, Sulfur II and Oxygen III. This turned out to be a wise move as I loved the camera so much I sold it and moved up!

• ZWO ASI2600MM-Pro

  In 2024 I bit the bullet, after having a good tax return I upgraded my ASI533MM to an ASI2600MM, moving the filters over. This camera is amazing! Very sensitive, very quiet, huge APS-C sized sensor. This is now my primary camera and I don't think it will get replaced. As I'm now in my later 60's there are fewer nights with boundless energy to take pictures and less spare cash to get rid of. But after all these cameras it has been a journey and what a great place to end up. I may possibly upgrade the ASI533MC to the ASI2600 version perhaps, we will see. But for now wow - it doesn't get much better than this!! For more info...

  
  

  Control Systems

  
  
  Not a lot to say here! For many years, guiding was manual using a high power eyepiece with a crosshair. Once I started taking digital images, my guiding errors showed up in high resolution so obviously this wasn't good enough! This was kind of a mess until I bought my first SBIG camera which had two sensors in it, the original ST-8. A great way to go, a sensor for guiding, a sensor for imaging - until you started using heavy duty filters. Filters also dimmed the guide star...I got around that with the STF8300 by purchasing their super expensive off-axis guider and used a smaller CCD camera to guide with. All of this required software to work! Initially I had a Pentium II running Windows NT4 and CCDSoft v4 software. And of course, spare car batteries to run it all.
  
  Through the years various laptops - with increasing energy efficiency - have become useful for capturing images. But now, we have the option to dump the laptop and go with low powered devices to run our imaging sessions! The most popular at this time is from ZWO, the ASIair controller. Not only does this ARM based system-on-a-chip system sip the power but the entire system can be run with nothing more than a phone or tablet! It handles everything from filter changes, meridian flips, even shutting down after a run if needed and parking the scope. Very civilized! BUT - other than the mount, your hardware needs to be made by ZWO.
  
  As I have run hardware from a number of vendors I needed to explore other controller options. A while back there was a sale on iOptron's iMate controller. Similar horsepower to the classic Air but had drivers for almost everything on the market! But, as I found out after purchase, there wasn't an app to control this! It was Kstars and EKOS based, excellent software but it has a steep learning curve. Fortunately it was on sale.. But a nicely made piece. 3 USB ports and 3 power outputs, two under software control. iOptron only seem to update the software on an annual basis which is unfortunate. This has the potential to be a great controller but sadly it is almost orphaned it seems. So, this controller is just a remote desktop to a Linux based system running Kstars which may not have that broad an appeal - but it works well! More info here.
  
  Finally, the last system I have worked with is Stellarmate X. This is an available hardware system or an operating system download for purchase for Raspberry Pi based ARM systems or Intel based mini computers. My understanding is that Stellarmate manage the underlying KStars and EKOS software which is opensource and freely available. Unlike Windows based systems like NINA, this is an integrated package of software rather than several packages kluged together. Like ASIair in that respect. I picked this up used for a decent price and while I haven't done much with it yet, I'm impressed with it! I will be using it with my "smart scope". Again, it can be controlled with a phone or tablet and it receives tons of updates. A learning curve for sure but you will see many similarities in function and form with ASIair. I wish that they would release a demo version of the software so that people could try before they buy but no. Here's info on my system. If you would like to try open-source Kstars/EKOS/INDI on a number of different Linux distros, check out what these guys offer for how-to guides!