Remote Setup
Since Summer 2024, I have the pleasure to have my astrophotography telescope setup at Starfront Remote Observatories. I was one of the first ones to send their setup to the extremely dark skies in the Heart of Texas, USA. Back then, they only had a handfull of telescopes installed in two buildings. Since then, they built 6 more with 5 buildings being operational (as of January 2025).
I am extremely happy that I took the decision to send my equipment to a remote observatory. Do not get me wrong, one of the most pleasant parts of this fascinating hobby is to sit under the stars and enjoy the view while your telescopes shoots away. The harsh reality, living in one of the cloudiest regions in Europe, is that the chance you get to stay under clear skies is extremely rare. Usually, even when I got one to two clear nights per month, I don’t have a backyard where I can install my telescope and the clear nights rarely coincided during weekends or during new moon.
Therefore, it only made sense for me, after having purchased such an expensive setup, to send my rig to a remote observatory. After looking around for a while, I pulled the trigger when I heard about Bray Falls’ amazing project of starting an affordable remote observatory in Texas.
Since I got installed in summer 2024, I average to about 100hrs of imaging time per month. This would have never been possible from home. In order to still get my fix under the stars and when the conditions are most favourable, I drive to a remote location about an hour from Zurich in the Alps of Glarus. There I enjoy taking landscape astrophotography images and usually bring along my visual 12″ Dobsonian to explore the universe with my own eyes.
Main Telescope
In Fall of 2024, I just had defended my PhD thesis and after working hard for it, I wanted to grant myself a present. Therefore, I decided to step up my astrophtography game and went for telescope hunting. After a while, I found a great deal on a Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED. The person selling it was getting rid of his whole equipment after quitting this hobby and made a great package deal if I bought the telescope plus camera, Chroma filters and accessories. I couldn’t resist and drove 3.5 hrs to Lausanne to pick up my new telescope setup. At the time, I still had in time to travel around with my setup to take astro-images. Therefore, I also bought a highly portable ZWO AM5 mount that allows the telescope to track the night sky.
I am extremely happy with the decision of this scope. The stars are very sharp from corner to corner and very well corrected. The field-of-view gives me enough reach to resolves lots of details and many deep-sky objects fill the whole image.
Facts about the Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED:
- Focal Length 550mm, Aperture 100mm (f/5,5)
- Apochromatic triplet with dedicated field flattener
- Weight: 6.5kg / 14lbs
Imaging Train and Accessories:
- ZWO ASI2600MM Pro (IMX571 mono sensor)
- ZWO Electronic Filter Wheel (7x36mm)
- Pegasus FocusCube v4 (focuser)
- Pegasus Falcon Rotator v2 (rotator)
- DeepSkyDad Flat Panel (illuminated panel and automatic cap)
- ZWO ASI220MM and ZWO off-axis guider (guide camera and OAG)
- Photographic Filters (36mm):
- Chroma LRGB
- Chroma H-alpha (3nm)
- Chroma OIII (3nm)
- Chroma SII (3nm)
Secondary Piggy-Back Setup
After deciding to send my equipment to a remote location, I wanted to make the most out of the situation and decided to include a widefield piggy-back lens on top of my main telescope. Its purpose is to take along any image that the main telescope is shooting at the time in tandem. Since it is extremely wide at 135mm focal length, the framing of the object is not a main concern. Many of the images you see in my gallery are taken with this system. The Samyang 135mm f/2 lens was with since the beginning of my astro journey and I almost felt sentimental when I packed it up for its new home under dark Texan Sky. It is a superb lens for astrophotography but is also perfect for portraits. It is sharp across corners even at full frame (as evidenced in this image of the milky way core).
I paired this lens with an OGMA AP26CC which has an APC-C color sensor. In order to take pictures of emission nebulae, I also installed a filter wheel with dualband filters. They allow me to take Hydrogen and Oxygen images together utilizing the Bayer matrix of the one-shot color camera. The same applies with the Sulfur and Oxygen dualband filters.
Imaging Train:
- OGMA AP26CC (IMX571 color sensor)
- OGMA O’Tilter
- ZWO Electronic Focuser
- Touptek Electronic Filter Wheel (5×2″)
- Astrodymium dedicated rings
- Photographic Filters (2″):
- OGMA UV/IR cut filter
- Altair HaOIII Dualband Filter (6nm)
- Altair SIIOIII Dualband Filter (6nm)
Remote PC
In order to control telescopes remotely, you also need to have some sort of PC where all your electronic is plugged into. For my remote project, I built a mini PC which I could configure the parts myself. I can log into it using Remote Desktop which works perfectly with any computer including Macs and phones.
To control my telescopes, I use the awesome open-source and free program N.I.N.A. (Nighttime Imaging ‘N’ Astronomy). I will soon write a guide on how to setup and use N.I.N.A. for remote imaging, especially focusing on the multiple scope imaging and project management around the Target Scheduler plugin.
Mini PC parts:
- AsRock Deskmini X300
- Ryzen 5 5600G (CPU with integrated graphics)
- 32GB DDR4 RAM
- Noctua Low-Profile AIr CPU Cooler
- 3TB M2.SSD
Control Programs:
- N.I.N.A.
- PHD2 for guiding
- ASCOM drivers
Workstation
Workstation PC parts:
- Asus Prime AP201 case
- Ryzen 9 7900x 12-core CPU
- 64GB DDR5 RAM
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super
- 4TB Gen4 M2.SSD
- 2x12TB HDD Synology NAS in RAID1 mode
Processing Programs:
- Pixinsight
- RC Astro Tools:
- BlurXterminator
- StarXterminator
- NoiseXterminator