About Us
Forthier Astrophotography was founded by a Chemist and an Accountant from Northern Illinois in 2026. Both have a background and a love for astronomy, but the lousy Illinois weather coupled with light pollution made dedicating time towards deep sky imaging a fruitless endeavor. Enter Starfront Observatories near Rockwood Texas. Imaging under pristine Bortle 1 skies became a real possibility. The pair assembled a rig capable of fully remote operation and began gathering light in January of 2026.
Equipment
The imaging rig consists of some old equipment, and some new:
The main imaging scope is an Explore Scientific carbon fiber 127mm F/7.5 apochromatic triplet. The scope has a focal length of 952mm, which when paired with our APS-C camera sensor, offers a versatile field of view good for medium and large galaxies, as well as many nebula in the Northern hemisphere. The scope itself has been used for over a decade for both visual as well as imaging applications, and continues to perform well.
The main imaging camera is a ZWO ASI2600MM. It is a monochrome thermoelectrically cooled DSO camera with an IMX571 APS-C sensor. The resolution of the camera is 6248×4176, and boasts exceptionally low read noise.
Since the imaging camera is monochrome, in order to produce color images, filters are required. We use a ZWO EFW 7x36mm filter wheel. The filters installed are 36mm Baader filters – Luminance, Red, Green, Blue, Hydrogen Alpha, Sulphur-II, and Oxygen-III. This allows for the production of both true color images, as well as narrowband imaging using the Hubble pallet, as well as a mixture of both.