| Nature |
| Choa, Charlotte Outdoors Adventure, is the most active club in the Carolinas, and based in Charlotte.
Many hikes are scheduled every week-end, all around the state. Most of the pictures of North and South Carolina state
parks have been taken during one of those hikes. |
CHOA |
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| Here is a list pretty extensive of many waterfalls you can find in North Carolina, and some
information about where to find them. Many links direct to other interesting sites on the mountains of North Carolina. |
Waterfalls |
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| Visit North Carolina gives you a lot of information about events, festivals, places to stay
in North Carolina, from the mountains to the beaches. In fall, a very interesting animation gives the current color of the
leaves of the trees week by week. |
VisitNC |
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| The Division of Parks and Recreation of North Carolina lists the 34 state parks, for each
of them you can get directions on how to get there, and a map of the park with all the trails, campgrounds and bike trails. |
NC State Parks |
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| The Blue Ridge Parkway, a 400 miles beautiful road following the crest of the Appalachian
from Virginia to the end of North Carolina. |
Blue Ridge Parkway |
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| Equipment |
| The camera used through most of the site until January 2005 is the latest Canon Digital Rebel. It's an SLR so
that the lens can be removed and the body attached to a telescope. It has 6 megapixels and very low noise, giving very
good astronomical pictures. Here is a complete review of the camera. |
Review |
 |
| The camera used after January 2005 is the Canon 20D. It's also an SLR so
that the lens can be removed and the body attached to a telescope. It has 8.3 megapixels and even lower noise, giving
much better astronomical pictures. Here is a complete review of the camera. |
Review |
 |
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| A very good camera store to buy equipment and develop pictures is WolfCamera. They take
care of pictures much more than regular one hour development stores. |
WolfCamera |
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| The telescope used is the Orion SkyView Pro 8. The diameter of the primary mirror is 8 inches
(203mm) with a focal length of 800mm giving a ratio of f/4. The mount is motorized on both axis, powered by cells, with
a hand controller. The camera is plugged at the prime focus of the telescope. A second smaller refractor telescope is
used with an illuminated eyepiece to perform manual guiding during an exposure. |
Orion |
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| Quality comes with a good mount and good optics. During 2004 a new mount has begun to be used, the
Losmandy G-11. It tracks much better than the Orion SkyView, has Periodic Error Correction, different tracking speeds,
and two motorized axis with speed up to 8x.
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Starting in 2005 a few new telescopes and lenses are used for imaging.
Another Orion 100mm refractor f/6 is used for guiding and sometimes for taking pictures. It's not an APO so the colors
on pictures are not great. A Celestron C9.25 f/10 is used for planet images and small objects needing a lot of magnification.
A focal reducer is sometimes used. A Takahashi FS-60C f/6 is used for wide-angle pictures with good quality as this
scope is an APO. A focal reducer is also sometimes used. Finally, a Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM is used for even wider
angle pictures.
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