Two views of Villatalla
ALFREDO ZANAZZO'S HOME PAGE
| Astrophotography is one of my hobbies, as I like also painting and playing jazz piano. I began to be interested about telescopes in 1987 while I was performing at the Metropolitan in New York. My job is Opera singing (I am a dramatic bass) .My first telescope was a 60 mm Tasco refractor bought in a Manhattan ‘s big store for 20 $ with which I began to observe those four or five stars I could see from the roof of the Hotel.After I discovered that one of them was Juppiter I bought a C8. At that time the novelty telescope was the Simak and when I was back in Italy I ordered a custom made instrument very similar to it but not existing on the market: the CONCENTRIC SCHMIDT CASSEGRAIN. This instrument that is just average for deep-sky observing, proved to be superb for medium size astrophotography. With its 16 inches primary ‘s and corrector’s diameter and a focal lenght of 1600mm, at f=4 it is a fast astrograph with a good image-scale, capable of delivering 13-15 micron stars on a 110 mm circle of film, with a field of 4 degrees corrected by a flattener lens. The 40% obstruction does not unduly affect contrast or resolution. The focal plane is external and guiding is via a large custom-made off/axis guider that contains the flattener lens . The focusing is done electrically on the secondary mirror and it is controlled by a special periscope and a dial indicator placed between the secondary and its spider. The Observatory is near my home in the small village of VILLATALLA (see the map) at 600 meter above sea level and it has a very good sky considering its modest elevation. A second large instrument is now in the observatory: it is a 12", f=20 Trischiefspiegler, specially designed for observing planets. | Two views of Villatalla
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| INTERESTING LINKS |
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KITAHARA, the japanese astrophotographer who did the best colour astrophotos I have ever seen!!!
Chuch Vaughn's fantastic astrophotos (In my opinion a the best high resolution B&Wastropixes of the whole Net)
See the world wide largest list of Astrophotographers sites !
A lot of links about astro and other in MEL BARTEL site!
CHRIS VEDELER'S interesting Astronomy page
See the marvels of new colour films on JERRY LODRIGUSS site
Go to the largest amateur Schmidt Camera photo-archive
Visit the very impressive MAXX Astropage
 see the pages about THE
FACE ON THE MOON |
 ALFREDO |
 See me as Opera singer |
listen to me playing jazz |  |
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SOME OF MY PHOTOS From left: The Owl nebula, The Cocoon nebula, M31 Click on the images to see them larger |
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| A GALLERY OF MY OIL PAINTINGS (CLICK ON THE ICONS TO ENLARGE) |
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