We used to live in Miri, at 04 deg 20' N, 114 deg E.  This was where all the webcam images were taken

Being close to the equator, the climate is tropical with temperatures in the range 23 - 91 deg C (74 - 89 F).  We get lots of rain - annual rainfall is 111 inches a year!  There are, on average, 166 days with rain in a year, and the sky is not often without cloud, given the high humidity.  Here's a chart showing the temperature and dew point on a typical day.

Relative humidity climbs through the evening and the dew point is usually reached at around midnight.  On a cloudless evening, I will start imaging at around 8 pm, but by midnight the air at altitude will hit dew point and the sky is then effectively shut for the night!

Given that for half of each month the moon is out and the sky then is too bright for imaging Deep Sky Objects, I usually get on average 2-3 imaging nights a month.

My telescope is an 8" f/5 Newtonian reflector, which I bought in late 2001 from BTOW in Perth, Western Australia.  It is a Skywatcher, which is made in China, I believe by Synta (??).  I am quite happy with the quality of the scope, even under the demands of CCD imaging, but I don't really have a basis for comparison, as this is my first telescope.

I image exclusively from my balcony, which has a good view of the eastern sky.  Being near the equator I am able to view both the northern and southern skies up to about +-75 deg Dec.

The focuser is pretty basic, which means that the fine adjustments needed for imaging need to be made with a very fine touch indeed.  On the plus side, there is next to no image shift as the telescope is focused.

The focuser is shown below with the supplied 2" to 1.25" eyepiece adapter.

The mount came with the telescope and is a Skywatcher EQ5 with Dual Axis drive.  There is a basic hand controller, seen here next to the computer.

I am definite that the mount is not really up to imaging.  Its periodic tracking error is about +- 25 arcsecs.  This is high, but what is worse is that the tracking jumps suddenly at parts of the cycle.  As a result I am only able to do individual exposures of only 25s.  Even with these short exposures, I normally have to discard 70% of the frames due to trailing.

The mounts stability in wind is also insufficient.  It's lucky that most nights here are quite still.  Even a slight breeze renders imaging impossible.

Balancing the mount

I usually arrange the counterweights on the mount such that there is a slight weight opposing the direction of tracking.  This keeps an even pressure on the drive train and helps tracking accuracy. 

The camera is a SAC7B from SAC Imaging.  This is a commercially built webcam conversion.  Being a webcam, image depth is only 8 bits, as opposed to the 12 or 16 bits normally used by conventional astronomical CCD cameras.

The camera has Peltier (thermo-electric) cooling, which should cool the CCD to 30 deg C below ambient.  However I do all my imaging with the camera uncooled.  This is because in the humid conditions here, even slight cooling causes condensation on the CCD window.  The white connector is for the Peltier - usually unused.

Fortunately the camera has low, repeatable, dark-current, the noise from which can be effectively removed by subtracting dark frames.

The camera, with the 1.25" eyepiece adaptor attached is shown here, with the 2" to 1.25" adaptor removed from the telescope.

I normally attach the camera directly to the telescope by removing the eyepiece adaptor from the camera as well as the 2" focuser attachment (shown right), then screwing the camera to the 2" focuser attachment.  This is then attached back to the focuser assembly (below).  Notice the marks I have made on the focuser barrel to indicate the approximate positions of focus.  The inner marks - on the barrel just outside the black bit - indicates prime focus, while the other mark is used when imaging with a Barlow lens.

Because I operate the telescope and camera from a desktop computer located in the room adjoining the balcony, I have to run cables from the telescope to the room.

There are 3 sets of cables (picture at right).  The first (centre), runs from the hand controller to the mount and controls the RA and Dec drives.  I made these up from two phone cables bound together with electrical tape and wound onto a fishing line reel.

The USB extension cable (left) came with the SAC7B.  The image is transferred down this cable.

The exposure control cable (right) for the camera is a normal phone extension cable and is connected to the computer via a phone-jack to parallel port adaptor (included with the SAC7B).

The mount and drive originally came with a battery pack that took 4 'D' size batteries.  Since I run the mount for long periods (4-5 hours per imaging session) these batteries would quickly run out.  Instead I use a 6V AC-DC power supply that originally ran a small cassette player to run the mount.  This plugs into a power board under the computer table.

Ironing board and golf umbrella

Serious astrophotography accessories!  Right in front of my house is a bright halogen streetlamp.  I use the umbrella, held by the ironing board against the balcony railing, to shade the aperture of the telescope from this light.