Telescopes & Mount - Kenthurst Observatory

Telescopes and Mount

The main telescope is a 10-inch Meade LX200GPS Schmitt-Cassegrain. It is mounted on a Meade equatorial wedge. When the Optical Tube Assembly is parallel to the forks the telescope is pointing at the South Celestial Pole. This polar alignment makes it possible to take long-exposure photographs with minimal movement of the stars in the image.

The piggybacked telescope is an Orion ED80 refractor. It serves sometimes as a guide scope for the LX200GPS and other times as the main scope with the LX200GPS serving as the guide scope. A Losmandy dovetail plate and rings connect the ED80 firmly to the LX200GSP.

Heated dew remover strips can be seen around the objective lens' of both telescopes. A dew shield is never needed. A rail runs the bottom lengt of the LX200GPS and holds two sliding rods each of which has counterweights. Such a system is necessary in order to get dynamic balance. The lower counterweight rod is hidden behind the telescope forks..

The electronic controller for the dew heater strips can be seen at right centre.The boxes to the right centre of it are the D.C. power supplies for the Canon DSLR camera. The cables connecting to the Meade LX200GPS are (from left to right) the 12V D.C. power,the connection to the Meade microfocusser, the connection to the telescope handbox (which is visible at right but seldom used) and the serial connection to COM 1 on the computer.

The clear plastic box contains the D.C. power supplies for the dew heating equipment and for the LX200GPS telescope. The silver boxes at top centre are part of the USB extender cables which connect the cameras to the computer. Just left of centre on the ground is a white switch. It is used to break connection between the computer and the Canon DSLR long-exposure (>30 second) trigger. It was decided to use the standard telescope tripod and not a custom pier in order to gain experience as to the optimum location and height of a future pier.  In reality a pier would add nothing to performance and is not a high priority.