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I image from a surburban location approximately 10 miles SE of the centre of London. Light pollution is very bad (see image below looking South taken from the loft window on a typical winters night) and at best on a good night mag 3.75 stars are just visible. To determine my Naked Eye Limiting Magnitude (NELM) I try and count the number of stars I can see within the Great Square of Pegasus (see table below). From my home I ocassionally kid myself that I can see 1 star. My local horizons are also poor due to trees and roofs so most of my imaging tends to be NE to E at higher than 30degs from the horizon. I image using a portable setup from the end of my garden. Once in a while I will join a group of fellow imagers for a weekend camp at darker sites - typically within a 50mile radius of London. The equipment that I use to image is fairly basic consisting of a couple of inexpensive refractors, a modified webcam (self modded) for guiding, an entry level cooled CCD camera for imaging with a set of LRGB & Ha filters on a manual filter wheel and an EQ6 computerized goto mount. Pictures of my current imaging setup can be seen below.

Determining NELM by counting stars in Great Square of Pegasus

No' Stars	0	1	3	4	5	7	9	13	17	30
Mag Limit	<4	4.5	4.7	5	5.25	5.5	5.75	6	6.25	6.5

The images below show my current imaging setup. When I started astrophotography my first scope was a Russian built Tal-2m 6-inch, F8 reflector on a pedastal mount with RA drive only. I imaged using a Toucam Webcam. I then modified this myself for long exposure photography and subsequently upgraded the CCD chip to a much more sensitive Black and White sony chip. (I actually still use this camera as my guider camera). My next acquisition was a EQ6-Pro German Equatorial Mount with ED80 and ZS66 (mounted side-by-side on a dual mount bar). I also purchased a 2nd hand Atik16ic CCD camera & set of LRGB filters.

Equipment Images

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