I am always interested in finding things to do with my kit when the Moon interferes with normal wideband astrophotography. Last night the Moon was full so I turned my attention to a variable star in Bootes designated “YZ Boo”. It is a 10th magnitude star that fluctuates in brightness from approximately 10.3 to 10.8 …
Fifty years ago when I became interested in Astronomy my first telescope was a refractor designed for lunar and planetary work. That first year Mars came closest to Earth. I was amazed to see land features and polar ice caps. Jupiter’s cloud system and four of its brightest moons were easily seen and Saturn was …
I am writing to affirm that progress is inevitable but only with heaps of patience and experimentation. Two years ago I had the same telescope as today. So what’s the difference? The camera, but not what you think. It was how I was using it. The top image, the one in color, was taken with …
Telescope: William Optics ZenithStar 71mm f/5.9Camera: Atik 314E CCD (Read Noise 5.3e-, Full Well Depth 13400e-)Filters: Optolong LRGBMount: Unitron Model 152Tracking: Self-designed R.A. stepper motor with PPEC on Raspberry Pi 3BImage Acquisition: Astroberry INDI/Ekos on Raspberry Pi 3B+Remote Guiding Assistance and Polar Alignment: SharpCap 3.1Image Processing: AstroPixelProcessor (APP) version 1.076 Over five sessions: L: 250x90s …
These past few months I developed an interest in narrowband imaging mostly out of necessity due to the Moon. It turns out to be more challenging than I thought. One of my heroines in the field is Sara Wager. I recommend her website for anyone seeking to discover the secrets to good narrowband imaging. I’d …
While I wait for the weather to improve for astrophotography I discovered High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography through a friend in Great Britain. HDR is commonly used by real estate agents to capture beautiful sun-drenched living spaces. Astrophotographers have used HDR to capture stunning images of the Crescent Moon bathed in Earthshine and images of …
A former co-worker who has an interest in astronomy prompted me to answer the title question: “What makes it light up?” To understand what is happening look at a neon sign. It is made up of a tube of neon gas atoms. On both ends of the tube a very, very high electric voltage is …
Having recently broken the sound barrier with improvements to my Raspberry Pi’s tracking software, I am now able to take unguided 8-minute exposures. I set out to capture the PacMan nebula (NGC 281) in narrowband in order to do a full Hubble Palette but the weather turned ugly so I was only able to capture …
UPDATE: I want to thank Mabula Haverkamp, author of Astro Pixel Processor (APP). Beginning with version 1.075 APP successfully processes this image. The original story was written using version 1.074. As you read you can see that I had to fallback to using Siril which is no longer the case. The image shown above is …
Here are recent photos of my telescope as I was setting up to image the Andromeda Galaxy Mosaic. Noteworthy items include: Astroberry/KStars/Ekos/INDI using RasPi Model 3B+ Unitron Model 152 German Equatorial Mount (50 years old and running great) William Optics ZenithStar 71mm f/5.9 (20th Anniversary Edition) Atik 314E CCD (used, approximately 10 years old) ZWO …