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Starfisher

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Starfisher

Starfisher

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Hi All ,

i'm Jan(for the dutch speaking) / (Ian/john for english speaking) B. I live in a small town called aalst ( same as a big town 130clicks from here).

I'am involved since i was an 11 yo kid into astronomy. i first had some binoculair experience and a starchart. than i discovred on the addict my father's 2 old Viking telescopes a 114mm/900 reflector and a 65mm/... refractor. the first years i could't do much alone with it because i was small and didn't have a clue how to align the finderscope,... without help of my father ( call me stupid :laugh:  ) . but than i started buying secondhand books , making more discoveries on the addict and in no time i was able to aling the finderscope myself , finding the moon and the planets and also some doublestars , later on my father learned me where to find the M42 , m45 and that was all i could find for 1.5years or so.

than i joined a youth-club for amateur astronomers called JVS Descartes where i learned more about astronomy ( and off-topics) , refining my skills of constellation recognition and learn a term 'starhopping'. i did also get chances to look in various telescopes , the biggest a 10" which was huge ( talking about late 90's over here) .

It really was my second home and when i went 17 i bought the awsome Firstscope 80 EQ WA which was really giving me an edge. first of all i hadn't to deal anymore with 35yo 0.96" eypieces with a fov of 0.2° but some (in that time for me) fance 1.25" ep of 25mm which gave me a 2.5° (or something like that) view. starhopping and finding messier was never so easy :grin:  .

From just being a member i evolved a year later to be a full-staff member and so my scope upgrade followed the year after. an 8" dobson of skywatcher which was a real new kid around the block around the years 2000's (did buy mine in 2003). With the experience build up this light-canon was my favorite weapon of choice , certainly because i gained now an 2" ep as well. also the fact it was my first year serving the armed forces, which gave me more financial boost for my n°1 hobby did had a certain role. i think i never bought so much ep's , filters in such a short time. i now really was a complete messier finder , i could show the youngest members in less than 10 mins over 15 different messiers without even using my finderscope! it were these days i also only had sympathy for dobsons , eq's and goto's were for losers ( but that view would radical changed over the years) .

so times past and when i did my last year in the youth-club i selled the 8" dobsie to buy an 10" on an heq-5 and triying out the meade DSI which were my first babysteps in AP , i also had an etx 105 goto that time. it all didn't work out so well , i had no auto-guider and the time i wanted to invest more i suffered a car-crash which financial ruined me. so for many 3 years i did only some visiual.

after my first tour Afghanistan , i had more money , some wiser insights and was so pleased with the visual work.certainly after showing in my etx the moon and planets to afghan kids and elders,  so i bought me an 14" dobsie. for 5 years this was my bud and still is for visual work. i did lots of observations, gave demonstrations on astro-themed evenings which were likely inspiring for other people which joined the astronomy adventure as well. meanwhile i had my second tour afghanistan done as well ( still active btw in the armed forces ).

so the AP was in hibernation: untill last years where some savings came free. which i didn't have to spend on my house ( a bit on the kids ofc ) . so i start researching visited many websites to see what people used, bought me some books,... . till the day of gear-buying came: i ended up with an esprit150ED APO on an az-eq6-gt and a secondhand atik 383L mono with eqquiped fw. i started to learn AP now like i had the joy when i bought my firstscope 80eq wa. but it didn't last long. because of constructional-financial trouble i had to sell the esprit150 and the ccd. i now had to use my firstcope 80EQ on the az-eq6-gt mount and an old nikon D50(which is half broken)

Luckly for me i kept the mount and after recovering my loss , is there new hope :laugh: .

i saved some bit again to buy me an Skywatcher BK130PDS ( thanks to the imaging with 130PDS topic on this site)which will be a lightwight on my mount. and luck strikes twice because i also had some saving over to buy me next month(fingers crossed) an unmodded canon 1200D.

in the following year i hope to expand my gear and filling my astrobin-account up with some better pictures than now.

So, this is me. Happy to be here.

Jan

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glowjet

glowjet

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Hi Jan and welcome to SGL, shame you had to sell the 150 APO Espirit that would have been a nice refractor for observing. Still you can hope that times ahead will improve, so that you can once again indulge yourself in some expensive equipment, enjoy the forum :)

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Starfisher

Starfisher

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thanks again!

@ Glowjet : i haven't been long idle. i used for 2 nights my old scope and camera. But... today i gought me a unmodded Canon 1200D and one of the next days my skywatcher 130PDS arrives at my scopeseller along with a dewshield, bathinov-mask , clip lps-filter for the camera . and from than it is a bit by bit building up the rest of the gear

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