My Field Setup: WO SpaceCat51, SkyWatcher EQM-35 Pro, Altair Astro 183C, Stellarmate Raspberry Pi
Equipment Mount: SkyWatcher EQM-35 Pro Telescope: William Optics SpaceCat51 (Accessories: WO Cat Series Saddle Handlebar for Guide Scope) Focuser: DeepSkyDad AF3 Imaging Camera: Altair Astro Hypercam 183C Guide Camera + Scope: ZWO ASI120MC-S + ZWO MiniScope Polar Alignment: QHY CCD Polemaster Imaging Computer: Raspberry Pi 4, 4Gb Ram, 64Gb Sandisk Extreme running Stellarmate 1.4.6 (Beta … Continue reading My Field Setup: WO SpaceCat51, SkyWatcher EQM-35 Pro, Altair Astro 183C, Stellarmate Raspberry Pi
Capture, Process, Post-Process M42 Orion Nebula
(Note: I’ll come back and add some screenshots at a later date!) Astrophotography is great when it all comes together, but sometimes that road is full of frustrations and problems. I bought my first “real” telescope in 2015 (a Celestron 6SE) that whetted my appetite for the hobby. Whilst the Alt-AZ based scope didn’t lend … Continue reading Capture, Process, Post-Process M42 Orion Nebula
Working through my guiding problems
This post is a little different to the others in as far as I’m documenting the issues I have been having with guiding, and the steps I’ve been taking to fix and improve. Guiding is not necessarily an essential part of astrophotography, but there are times when it is indispensable. Guiding keeps your telescope + … Continue reading Working through my guiding problems
Journal: 31st August 2018 (New ASI294MC, M31, Sadr, NGC6960)
I’m starting a journal of my astrophotography journey, and allowing me (and others) to share and help improve. It also serves predominantly as a record of what works and doesn’t work for my kit, capabilities and location. Overview Time Start: 9pm | Time End: 2.30am Weather: Clear, but not great seeing. Clouds rolling in at … Continue reading Journal: 31st August 2018 (New ASI294MC, M31, Sadr, NGC6960)
Journal: 21st August 2018
I’m starting a journal of my astrophotography journey, and allowing me (and others) to share and help improve. It also serves predominantly as a record of what works and doesn’t work for my kit, capabilities and location. Overview Time Start: 9pm | Time End: 2.30am Weather: Clear, slightly humid. Clouds rolling in at 2.30am. Targets … Continue reading Journal: 21st August 2018
My guide to auto-guiding Part 1: Configuring PHD2
In an ideal world, we’d set up our telescopes, on our very accurate mounts, that are accurately polar aligned and no matter where we pointed our telescope and camera, we’d be able to lock in on a target for hours on end to capture those faint DSOs without a care for any object slowly drifting … Continue reading My guide to auto-guiding Part 1: Configuring PHD2
Wake-On-Lan: Sleeping and Waking up your Remote Imaging PC
Did you know that you can remotely wake up a sleeping PC by sending a “magic packet” to your network adapter? I find this immensely useful for my PC that sits with my remote imaging setup. With a normal PC, you have two options when you want to walk away from your PC and have … Continue reading Wake-On-Lan: Sleeping and Waking up your Remote Imaging PC
Plate solving using AstroTortilla and SharpCap
Plate solving is the action of resolving what you see in the sky to match where your (computer controlled) mount thinks it is in the sky. For those transitioning from using a handset to computer controlled, see this step as being roughly the same topic as a 1-star align: validating the position of where your … Continue reading Plate solving using AstroTortilla and SharpCap
Imaging the Moon Part 1: The basic capture
I’ve been very humbled to have a couple of my images appear in the BBC’s Sky At Night Magazine, with one landing me one of their prizes. I love taking pictures of the Moon. I think it’s one of the easiest objects in the night sky to help practice your astrophotography skills. It’s not without … Continue reading Imaging the Moon Part 1: The basic capture
The Amateur Astrophotographer's Cookbook 