About

I am a Greek Computer Scientist and Physicist currently living in Manchester, UK.

My interest in amateur astronomy started when I was 9 years old (back in 1988) when on a visit to the US my uncle gave me a 40mm refractor called the “Halleyscope”. I then asked for a small pair of binoculars for my birthday and a few months later I signed up for Astronomy magazine and Astronomy Now subscriptions, two magazines I kept reading religiously for several years. Around ’91 I got a Soviet 4.3″ Newtonian reflector on an equatorial mount (known now as the TAL-1, although my early version was called “Mizar”), which served me well with observing and even some attempts at astrophotography, until around the turn of the century when mostly due to lack of time I stopped taking it out to look at the stars… I then moved to New York for a few years where the sky was always bright orange so it never occurred to me that a telescope might be useful.

So, after a hiatus of a decade or so, I picked up my favorite hobby again in 2012. I found out a lot had changed since the 90’s, most notably amazing affordable equipment and the CCD/DSLR revolution which completely transformed astro-imaging to something everyone can try with great results.

And since I tend to experiment with things, I thought I should share some interesting tidbits with whomever might be interested.

Current Equipment

OTAs:
Celestron C9.25 (9.25″ f/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain)
Sky-Watcher Equinox 80ED (80mm f/6.25 doublet refractor)
Sky-Watcher 200PDS (8″ f/5 Newtonian)
Sky-Watcher 130PDS (5″ f/5 Newtonian)
Sky-Watcher Evostar 90 (90m f/10 refractor)
Celestron Travel Scope 70 (70mm f/5.71 refractor)

Mounts:
iOptron ZEQ25GT
Sky-Watcher HEQ5 Pro
Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer

Cameras:
Canon 550D
Canon 600D – Full Spectrum modded
Altair GPCAM2 IMX224
ZWO ASI290MM

Camera Lenses:
Canon 18-55/3.5 IS
Canon 15-85/3.5 IS
Tair-3S 300/4.5
Jupiter 37A 135/3.5
Jupiter 21M 200/4.0
Super Takumar 50/1.8
Tamron 28/2.5
Halleyscope 400/10

Previous Equipment

Celestron C8
Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED
Celestron SLT 127 Mak
TAL-1
Sky-Watcher HEQ5 non-Pro
Canon 450D – Full Spectrum mod
Point Grey Firefly MV mono
QHY5L-IIm

(Visited 1,457 times, 7 visits today)

2 thoughts on “About

  1. Mike says:

    I downloaded the polar alignment app. But it does work with android. Are you going to have it available for android?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.