DIY Laser Guide Star

[RB astro]

Oh wow I remember seeing that thread. I actually posted on it when I was like 4 months old on the forum

And where's the time gone Pete, huh?

You were very articulate for a four month old, Peter.

LOL Paul.


Ok, here's another one, when I decided to melt the moon with a 1w greenie .... LOL

 

[GSS]

It feels just like yesterday Andrew doesn't it
Beautiful pics

 

[MEDDER]

Great setup Medder

Have a look through the thread (linked below) that I posted a few years ago and you'll see a photo of one of my scopes too.
At the top of the scope, you'll see my little 520nm pointer.

The Tarantula. {Now updated with The Horsehead}

Another one of my astro shots that I wanted to share with you. The Tarantula Nebula. This nebula is located inside the Large Magellanic Cloud and is one of the largest emission nebulas in our skies. Officially known as: NGC 2070 - The Tarantula Nebula. It derives it's name from the wispy...

laserpointerforums.com

Thanks, you have a goregous setup as well. I hope to one day have a tak fsq-106 and take it down to the southern hemisphere.

Also for anyone watching this thread. I am going to build just a basic laser for a bit of testing (I assume laser power vs guide star brightness is linear). Trying to decide on a happy medium between power and beam quality. I am pretty much just shipping at DTR for the expensive bits btw, the BDR-209 is really tempting but sorta pushing it a bit being only 900ish mw and 405nm. Then of course there is the NUBM44-V2 and NDG7475 but they have absoluty terrrible divergece and I question if the 12x cylendrical lenses will be enough. Would something like a NDB7875 be a good fit, or is there some other one that you know of that might be a good option?

Here are the two graphs showing the quantum efficiency for my two cameras, the b&w one is more important being that it is my 'guide camera' that controlls the adaptive optics, the yellow one is my main imaging camera which I suppose I could use for testing.