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StarCo by Ludo Coppens                                        © 2014-2023                                   ludo.coppens(at)kineco.be

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Hello,

It must have been at the end of the sixties, in the wake of a busy space exploration race, when I became interested in astronomy. Grinding a mirror, producing my own telescope and finaly purchasing an 8" Newtonian ... you recognise the story. But acquiring a MSc in mathematics and putting a lot of time in teaching that stuff at Sint-Martinusscholen ASO in Asse, Belgium(from 1980 to 2016) left little time for evenings at the telescope without neglecting family life. The usually not-so-good weather in Belgium and the buckets of light pollution were some other bad reasons for my Newtonian collecting dust instead of stars. For many years astronomy wasn't much more than monthly Sky&Telescope and Zenit (its more modest Dutch counterpart).

Things changed in 2002 - I can't find any particular reason why, but they changed. I bought some new equipment (a Meade 10” LX200GPS), and embarked on ccd-photography (with a Starlight Xpress MX716). Since then I (modestly) kept updating my equipment. In 2012 the camera was updated (a Starlight Xpress SXVR-H694), in 2020 the Meade mount was replaced by a more reliable iOptron CEM70g, in 2024 the old Takumar telephoto lens gave way to a TS100Q quadruplet apo refractor for wide field photography.  

This web shows some of the results. Although none of the images can compete with those of really talented amateurs, producing them and creating this website is great fun.

       Some recent results:


‘first light’ with the new TS100Q quadruplet apo, IC405 on 2024-01-09, separate RGB for colour and H-alpha for luminosity

IC405 colour