Researching my own gear for serious imaging, while learning how to image, I benefited enormously from Ron Wodaski's books The New CCD Astronomy, and The NewAstro Zone System, which are rich resources for both beginner and experienced imagers alike. I also joined a number of Yahoo forums devoted to various aspects of CCD imaging, telescopes, and mounts. Finally, and very important, was some advice that I got from Harout Markarian at Vancouver Telescope. When I started out, I could not have imagined that I would end up with a refractor, eventually choosing the 5" aperture Takahashi TOA-130, and the EM-200 mount, along with an SBIG camera that seemed ideally suited to this telescope, the SBIG STL-4020M. (Much later, Nick Seiflow, the owner of Vancouver Telescope, and Harout, would provide me with essential advice over months of conversation that would eventually lead to the equipment that I acquired for the Cabin in the Sky Observatory.) I had learned the truth of Wodaski's rule of thumb, that for high-quality astro-imaging, one needs to spend 50% of one's budget on the telescope, 50% on the mount, and 50% on the camera ;).

The TOA-130 was along time in coming, with the EM-200 mount arriving first, and the telescope taking until April of 2008 (that's Alexandre with the scope soon after its arrival). The SBIG camera would not arrive until the fall of 2008. My first image with the TOA-130 was done on May 6 2008, using the physics department's Meade DSI-III colour one-shot camera, a 25-minute integrated exposure of M3:

By November 19 2008, the SBIG camera finally in hand, I took the following image of the Pleiades, my first with the SBIG, consisting of a single one-minute un-guided 3x3 binned shot in each of RGB:

Unfortunately, there was little time for imaging with my personal gear over the next few months (with some technical problems with the camera that would eventually require servicing back at SBIG). Among the few imaging sessions that I managed during this period, on May 23 2009 I captured the following images of M13 and the M81/M82 system. This is also an excuse to show what my conditions were like at the time: imaging in front of my house on a very urban street in Vancouver, with bright street lights at the corner with Dunbar (practically shining down the telescope tube) making a flashlight entirely optional!

By this time though, my days of imaging from urban locations were coming to an end, for Loula, Alexandre, and I (with Elmo) had spent two fateful vacation weekends in the South Okanagan, in the summer and fall of 2008. Our first trip there, in August of 2008, was at my behest, so I could try out my refractor under dark skies. Loula loved the dry, desert-like conditions, a welcome break from the rain forest, and that got me ruminating that our family might benefit from having a permanent rural get away. With a plan in the back of my mind, of which even I wasn't fully cognizant, we ventured back on Thanksgiving weekend 2008 and, before we returned to Vancouver, we had purchased a 1.7 acre lot far outside of the town of Osoyoos! Within a week, our house in Vancouver was up for sale, so we could finance our rural "Cabin in the Sky", and by summer 2009 we had moved into a smaller townhouse in the city, as the building of our dream vacation home proceeded apace, along with my Cabin in the Sky Observatory. I've described the construction, installation, and commissioning of the observatory elsewhere in this site.

So that's the outcome of my whim to buy an entry level CCD camera for SFU in the spring of 2007! My all-consuming return to amateur astronomy, my passion as a teenager, has led to a total transformation in the lifestyle of my family. Our Cabin in the Sky, our piece of rural big-sky country, now defines all four of us, including our gentle-soul of a dog Suzie - swimming in the summer time, the glint of deep snow under brilliant blue winter skies, the pastoral solitude that beckons in all seasons, and the panoramic vista that greets us on our deck overlooking the valley.

History of the Cabin in the Sky Observatory!

And how astro-imaging changed my family's life: Part II

Copyright © 2014 Howard Trottier