Some interesting older imaging kit unearthed.

[ollypenrice]

A guy in a nearby village phoned me to ask if he could come round to show me a collection of astrophotographic items he'd been given by his father, who no longer used them. He was hoping for some explanations and, of course, I was happy to invite him over. There were some treasures in there, but plenty of questions too, so maybe an SGLer or two will come to the rescue.

There were two OTAs, a Vixen R200SS (still in production - an F4 imaging-optimized Newt) and a lovely Intes Micro 150/1500 Maksutov. This should give cracking lunar/planetary views.

The mount was a Vixen Polaris DX, a nice looking mount. I once had a Polaris GP. I couldn't see an autoguiding port on this, though. Can anyone advise here? (There was a GoTo handset in the box, a bit like a precursor to the Starbook, I'd have said.)

The camera was an SBIG ST9E so plenty of information is available on that. It has the dual chip, though, so the original owner probably was able to autoguide the mount or why buy that camera?

And a glorious bit of AP history: a little guide camera connected to a handset with a screen and 4 buttons for up, down, left, right. I've never seen such a thing before but presumably it's a half way house between the manual guidescope and the autoguider. I guess you'd get a star onto the screen, centre it and then use the buttons to keep it centred during an exposure. Rather nice in a way - but maybe not for 8 hours a night!! Has anyone ever come across this item?

And a question on a Baader Hyperion clickstop zoom. I've never seen one of these before, so far as I remember, and we couldn't see how to move it between focal lengths. There's a ring to turn, it seems, but it didn't want to turn and we could find no way of unlocking it or swapping between focal lengths. Is it defective or were we missing something?

Cheers,

Olly

[AKB]

31 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

And a question on a Baader Hyperion clickstop zoom. I've never seen one of these before, so far as I remember, and we couldn't see how to move it between focal lengths. There's a ring to turn, it seems, but it didn't want to turn and we could find no way of unlocking it or swapping between focal lengths. Is it defective or were we missing something?

Mine (Mk III) just turns and clicks, as you might expect.  So it's not sounding good.

32 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

I guess you'd get a star onto the screen, centre it and then use the buttons to keep it centred during an exposure. Rather nice in a way - but maybe not for 8 hours a night!!

You will, however, be trying this, of course ... ?

[ollypenrice]

2 hours ago, AKB said:

Mine (Mk III) just turns and clicks, as you might expect.  So it's not sounding good.

You will, however, be trying this, of course ... ?

Well, you know, it is tempting as an excercise in re-enacting the past! The guy who came round has an interest in old style photography using antique equipment and techniques so it fits...

I did fear that all was not well with the Hyperion. I'll try a net search. Thanks,

Olly

[tomato]

On ‎14‎/‎01‎/‎2018 at 14:52, ollypenrice said:

And a glorious bit of AP history: a little guide camera connected to a handset with a screen and 4 buttons for up, down, left, right. I've never seen such a thing before but presumably it's a half way house between the manual guidescope and the autoguider. I guess you'd get a star onto the screen, centre it and then use the buttons to keep it centred during an exposure. Rather nice in a way - but maybe not for 8 hours a night!! Has anyone ever come across this item?

 

Star on a screen? That were luxury! My ST-4 (imported from sunny California in 1989-90) had a box with buttons. It beeped and occasionally displayed some numbers when in find and focus mode, it used to take me hours to find a guide star. But when sorted, oh the sheer joy of letting a microprocessor keep the star in position, while those photons casually reacted with the film emulsion.... It now resides in the Tomato AP Museum.

Oh, and sorry Olly,  my Baader zoom eyepiece gently clicks between positions.  

[mftoet]

On 1/14/2018 at 15:52, ollypenrice said:

The mount was a Vixen Polaris DX, a nice looking mount. I once had a Polaris GP. I couldn't see an autoguiding port on this, though. Can anyone advise here? (There was a GoTo handset in the box, a bit like a precursor to the Starbook, I'd have said.)

Is the GoTo handset Vixen brand? You can install a DD-3 handset (non-GoTo) that has an ST-4 autguider on it. I use one for my Vixen Super Polaris (SP). (Please notice the white cable.)

 By the way, the Vixen SP and SP-DX are the predecessors of the Vixen GP (Great Polaris) and GP-DX. So which DX mount of Vixen are we looking at?

On 1/14/2018 at 15:52, ollypenrice said:

And a glorious bit of AP history: a little guide camera connected to a handset with a screen and 4 buttons for up, down, left, right. I've never seen such a thing before but presumably it's a half way house between the manual guidescope and the autoguider.

I'm only familiar with Vixen's Stellar Guide (digital setting circles) and the AGA-1 autoguider system of Vixen, but that didn't had a display. You had to connect the AGA-1 to an external display/monitor. Tell (and show!) us more...