MY EQUIPMENT AND ME

 

I am engineer and I live in the suburbs of Paris, in a site that is very polluted by city lights. From my backyard, I can take images of the Sun, the Moon, planets and nebulas with narrow band filters. For deep sky imaging (galaxies, comets, nebulas...), I am obliged to go in the land, after loading my van. I began digital imaging (CCD) in 1994.

I have participated to several missions: crash of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter in July 1994 at the Pic-du-Midi observatory (with Christian Buil), total eclipses of 2001, 2002 et 2006 in Angola and Egypt (with Serge Koutchmy), deep sky journey in Angola in 2004.

I am in charge since more than 10 years of a workshop about Digital Imaging in the Festival d'Astronomie de Haute Maurienne.

I have received the Marius Jacquemetton award (photographic works) from the Société Astronomique de France in 1999.

The asteroid number19458 has been officially named Legault at the International Astronomical Union.

I have made numerous articles and lectures about imaging in Europe and USA. 

I have made two books: The New Atlas of the Moon with Serge Brunier (Firefly) and Astrophotographie (Eyrolles).

In 2003, I have won second prize ( Meade 8" LX90) in the Mars photo contest of Oceanside Photo and Telescope, a friendly team I had the pleasure to meet during one of my visits of California.

 The optical tube I currently use for the lunar and planetary images is a Meade 12" Schmidt-Cassegrain optical tube. Some other optical tubes were  used : Takahashi Schmidt-Cassegrain 225mm (9 ") telescope (F/D = 12), Takahashi Cassegrain Dall-Kirkham 250mm (10 "), Intes Maksutov-Cassegrain (Rumak type with separate secondary mirror) 250mm (10 ") and 180mm (7").

I use equatorial mounts Takahashi NJP-160 and Losmandy Titan.

I also use Takahashi refractors for large field deep-sky imaging :

- FSQ-106

- TOA-150 with large size corrector

The solar images have been taken with different refractors: Televue Pronto (70mm), FSQ-106, TOA-130 and TOA-150.

For white light solar imaging, I use a Baader helioscope. For H-alpha, a 0,5A Daystar filter with 180 mm pre-filter and telecentric system (diverging and converging doublets in front of the le Daystar).

Cameras

I currently use SBIG STL-11000M CCD camera with AO-L system. It is equipped with large band filters and narrow band filters (H-alpha...).

My first CCD camera, bought in 1994, was a Hi-SIS 22 (14-bit, no shutter), based on a Kodak KAF-0400 chip (768x512 pixels). A Hi-SIS 43 camera, based on a KAF-1602E chip (1536x1024 pixels) replaced it in November 1998.

I also use a reflex Canon 5D, Philips webcams and Astrovid video cameras.

Software

The images are essentially processed with Iris and Prism.