Here you can find al news and notes that are moved from the news section of the home page.

November 9th:  Still not happy with the result I did some extra photoshop work on NC891.. Made the stars a bit less bright..Think this is the best I can get out of this one.

November 8th: I did some reprocessing of ngc891. I used MaximDL this time. I think it looks better now.

November 5th:  Finaly some clear skies.  Had a good try on NGC891.

I got my wireless lan running, so now I can handle my laptop that is connected to the scope remote with Windows Remote Controle on my Main desktop ! I used it tonight for the first time and it works perfect !! No need to stay outsite one's all is setup, let the cold clear winters nights come :)

Next week my DSI arrives, hope the weather clears up a little..

October 3 2004: I sold my LPI. And...Meade will release a new ccd camera this month. The DSI "DeepSkyImage" I ordered one and hope my brother in law can take it with him when he visite 
us from the US next month.

October 2 2004: look what I found here, it seems that 
someone though  it's a good Idea to sell my ETX125 tripod mod ! :)

September 24 2004: I'm selling a LPI/Autostar Suite. drop me a note if your intressed.

I updated my LE Webcam article

September 12 2004: I had two clear nights this weekend. I managed to get a perfect polair alignment . imaging 42x60sec exposures with almost no drift at all ! I think I finaly know how to to do this !. Let 's see if the next clear night works out this way!

I took two shots, M103 and ngc5688. They were taken with my "old" webcam without the extra Cooling.  you can find them in the new LX200 image gallery.  Next week I gonna buy a 12volt powersupply so I finaly can use my cooled verstaPro.  

I have to do some re-arranging in my gallery, I don't like the look of it, well it has to wait till I have some more time.. It will do for moment.
September 5 2004: And the winner is...Frans. Over the 10.000 hits !! Thx for your reply :)

About mij webcam. The weather was very nice the last few days, it's clear all day but at night it's getting foggy somehow, so no further DS testing.  

I did play around with StarryNight4.5 connected to my LX200. That is big fun! I managed to make a 360 panorama view of my garden with my digicam and after doing some work on it in photoshop I imported it in starry night. It's really cool to see exactly the same garden when looking on my laptop as when looking around ! give a great situation awarnes about the sky.
Check this !

September 5 2004:Almost 10.000 hits on my site !! ( 9991 as we speak ! ) Are you 10.000 ?  CHECK Hit counter below and drop me a note ! ( just for the fun, no prices to win ;)  )

September 2 2004:  My modified vesta pro had it's real first light. I'm very happy with the result ! It was a B/W Raw image. 250x12sec stacked in k3ccd. Using a older color images of m57 I managed to get some color in the picture ! :)

July 24 2004:  I checked this Photoshop tutorial  and used it on my M13 and M57 images, notice any difference ? Before and after
.  
July 24 2004: The viewing conditions were very bad last night, but I did go outsite and used the time to do some Drift alignment practisch and PEC training. It worked very well ! I managed to get a very stable tracking.. Using K3CCD to see the tracking error in a graph my LX200 managed to follow for 5 minutes without real drifting ! not bad for a start.. So PEC trained and experience how to get a very good polar alignment with the drift method, all I need is a clear dark night to do some real imaging.

July 21 2004: I added a new link about ccd technics to my astrolinks .

July 15 2004: I added some info about the progress of  my modified webcam project.

July 7 2004: Finaly weather and time to check my LX200 with my ( "old" ) ToUCam. around 0:00 it was dark enough to make some deepsky images. What a difference this makes with a ETX, in one hour I made Images of 6 DS objects. I haven't trained the PEC ( periodic error correction ) of the LX200 yet, but almost 100% of the images in the  image sequences  were usable ! Compare this with the ETX were most time only 30-40% were usable because of tracking errors.
Goto's with autostars HP were always dead center in de ccd ! This is why I got myself a LX200 !!

As you may have noticed I got a "deepsky" logo in the lower banner of this page. I bought this software (DVD version) for my planning and logging. I played with it for a few weeks by now and I'm very happy with it ! Check the site if your looking for something like this, and don't forget to check the tutorial, it explains a lot about what it offers !

July 3 2004: I did it, I made my Vesta Pro webcam a LX sc1.0 It's still in a test setup, but it works and the hard part is done. Next is the Amp off mod en building it in a case with active cooling.

June 30 2004: No real clear skies here the last few weeks and it is getting dark very late (0:30 ) so I still haven't been able to do any imaging. I had some Quick looks at the moon and some clusters. Have to say there is a difference with what I was used to with my ETX125. I can't wait for the real dark nights coming back.

And there is this new webcam project I was planning for a while. I received my Vesta Pro I got over Ebay.de.  I did some "pin lifting practice on an old defect electronic componed to be sure I'm ready to go for the webcam mod. I started with the first steps, and for so far all looks good. have a look here

June 16 2004: I managed to buy a VestaPro webcam in ebay for a very good price. And plan to modify it to a VestaProSC3.2

June 11 2004: I change the name of my site from ETX125 to LX200 Astrophotography.  There is still a lot of re-arranging to do so don't wonder if you find a lot of ETX related articles at places you don't expect at an LX200 site.

June 10 2004: I added a avi file from the Ingress of venus with the 2nd contact of the sun. The Black drop effect distorion is very clear visible.  

There are two versions, a 37sec version of 760KB and a 2.16 minute version of 2.655KB.  Both movie's  are time laps of a 20min avi file( 2.5Gb !! )  taken with a Lx200 8", home made solarfilter and a Philips ToUcam pro. The 2 min version got some nonlinair time jumps ( slow downs) at the final stage of the Ingress.

June 8 2004: Today it was the day of the Venus transit. I visited the local  observation group in Bergum were they organised a  "Venus breakfast". although I did not have a solarfilter I took my LX200 with me in the hope I could borrow one. I could !! They had a 7" home made lying around that we managed to attaches to my 8" Lx200 with ducktape. We had a great day ! the weather was perfect, and I took a lot of Images with my webcam. I plan an dedicated "Venus transit" article with  more images in the near future.

May 30 2004: Yesterday my Wedge arrived. Setting up the :LX200 in a good polar alignment setup is something I have to practisch a few more time before I get the hang of it. Setting up a  precise polar setup is gonna take some more practisch.

Lot's of clouds spould it a little but I managed to make a first image of m13.

May 28 2004: Wednesday my new LX200GPS 8" was delivered .I was lucky at 0:00 the clouds were gone any I had a chance for some first light experience right away. And WooW !! this is a total different game !! I cannot compare the stability of a LX200 with the ETX. This thing is rock stable ! The view of a 8" impressed me to.. M13 ! woow... stay tunned !

May 20 2004: BREAKING NEWS ! It might come as a shock for some of you, but I sold my ETX125.  As you can read in the news item of April 19, I was already thinking about getting a LX200gps for a while and decided to have a try to sell my scope by dropping an note on a Dutch astronomy site. I came in contact with someone who looked like he was seriously interested. We came to a deal we both can be happy with and so my ETX125 changed owner last Sunday.

I plan to go for a LX200gps8" and hope to get one within a few weeks.

What does this mean for my ETX125 astronomy site ?
I plan to split this site up, All ETX125 related content will stay so you still can find the info if you need it. But the Focus will switch to LX200 astronomy. As a former ETX user I gonna try to keep you updated what the difference it gonna be with an LX200 so for people also thinking ( or dreaming as I first did ) about "upgrading" I hope I can be a help on showing if it is worth the money.

One last thing, my site counter went over 7800 hits this week, I wanna thank you for you interest and visiting my site I hope you keep coming even if the name is probably gonna change to: "LX200 GPS AstroPhotoGraphy"

May 10 2004: I started an article about long exposure webcams

May 4 2004: An with clouds covered sky spoiled the Moon total eclipse tonight. So no new  Images of this event this time.  I do have some images of the total eclipse nov 9 last year. If you didn't see them already check them out here !

April 26 2004: This weekend I had a try on ngc4565. I failed. Read here why ! "Tikkie naar links Jaap !!"

April 19 2004: I'm thinking about getting a 8" LX200 for a while by now. I played with a LX200 8" GPS a few weeks ago and although expensive in Europe, it's a real beauty. I'm not sure yet what to do, I realy like my etx125, but there is no way to have both. First I have to see what I can get for my ETX125. Let's see what happens. Check deze site for more info ( dutch )

 April 16 2004: I add a webcam made moon picture taken a few months ago to my moon gallery.

I added a weather information article "real-time weather data" . You can check the Europian cloud situation for the next few days with the latest NOOA satelite and GFS model forcast images. It's being updated daily.

April 11 2004: I did a reset,calibrate and driver training this afternoon and had very good goto's, It seems to be worth to recalibrate en train the drivers one's in a while.

 I installed the new  version of K3CCD 2.0. ( 35 day trail version ) It works very nice and got some new  options. One of them is the  "drift explorer". I needed it right a way to have a check on the bad polar alignment I had tonight.

The seeing was not bad so first I had a try on Jupiter, Saturn and Venus. Venus did not work out very well, it was over exposed so that's one for the next time.  Jupiter and Saturn worked out very well, have a look in my planet gallery !

I planed to have a try on some deepsky, but it seems that I had some bad tracking, there was a lot of drift. The Goto's were good so it was probably a bad leveled  tripod or bad polar alignment..With the new drift explorer of K3ccd I had a check, and found a way to correct it somehow by adjusting the tripods wedge ( that I easily do after the tripod mod ) . I give this tool a better look the next time I set up for some deepsky imaging, it could be helpful to get better tracking.. Because of incoming clouds I had to end the session and didn't get to the deepsky stuff.

March 28 2004:  My new site is up. Let me know what you think !

March 25 2004:  There is a new modification for the Philips webcams available.It gives you the possibility to read the data from the webcam in RAW mode. I had a try with it on M82. I'm not sure if it makes a big difference. Have to study the option. You can find more info on this site.

March 3 2004:I found a good article about color aberration in webcam images ( red and blue dispersion you sometimes find in the astro images ) have a look here.  Our better, have a look at the home site, it got a lot of info for amateur astronomy  !

February 23 2004:  I didn't feel for making images so I just had a relaxed look at Saturn and m42 The Orion nebula. The seeing was not bad, I could see the Cassini division very nicely.

I also had a try on the area were the horse head nebula should be just to see if I can see any nebula at all.. well, not.. I didn't expected anything else, I have to leave my city backyard for that one and look for a very dark night. after an hour the clouds came in.

For a change it was a nice observation time without webcam and laptop, you start to forget how nice that can be one's you so busy with all the CCD action.