Astrophotography on the Go Book Review

Astrophotography on the Go by Joseph Ashley ‘Astrophotography on the Go’ from Springer is part of the Patrick Moore Practical Astronomy series and the subtitle for it is ‘Using Short Exposures with Light Mounts’. Most people who travel to do their astrophotography won’t take their usual hi-end home imaging equipment with them, but will usually

Read More →

FocusMax Downloads

Over the years I have kept a few copies of Focusmax on my computer. So because Focusmax is not free anymore and v3 is no longer supported I decided to put them available for download onto this blog. Focusmax Downloads – a few old v3 files

Comet Lovejoy Video C/2014 Q2

This a short Comet Lovejoy video that I have looped a few times. It was taken from stills I took on 10th January 2015. These are about 18 Luminance frames of 4 minutes each taken with an Atik 460EX Mono Camera with an Altair Astro 80mm triplet telescope on an EQ8 mount.

Comet Lovejoy Images – C/2014 Q2

These are my processed Comet Lovejoy images. I don’t think they are that great, I found them really tricky to process. The 1st time I have had the joy (no pun intended) of imaging a comet that moves so fast. I gave up trying to process the RGB frames, as I tried imaging the comet

Read More →

Choosing and Using Astronomical Filters Book Review

Choosing and using astronomical filters book Every astronomer uses filters, whether you are an imager or an observer. At last there is now a book that covers all the different types of filters that you can use at night or during the day. The book covers light pollution filters, planetary filters, solar filters, ND filters

Read More →

Concise Catalog of Deep-Sky Objects Book Review

Concise Catalog of Deep-Sky objects – Astrophysical information for 550 galaxies, clusters and nebulae. 2nd edition. This information book covers 520 northern hemisphere objects and 30 southern hemisphere objects. So the book covers the most common objects. This is the 2nd edition of the book, and this time the book contains images of the Messier

Read More →

Comet Lovejoy 2014 Data for TheSky 6

Here is some data I used for getting the comet to appear on my copy of TheSky 6, as the import from web feature no longer seems to work. I am sure this data would work in other planetarium programs as well. Eccentricity, Perihelion Distance, Orbital Inclination, Argument of perihelion etc.

Horsehead Nebula and Flame Nebula

Horsehead Nebula and Flame Nebula taken on 6th January 2015. Taken in Ha, 14x5min frames, on an Altair Astro 80mm Triplet telescope with Televue x0.8 reducer, Atik 460 mono camera and EQ8 mount.

ZWO ASI120MM S USB3.0 CMOS Astronomy Camera

Well I just got my ASI120MM S USB3.0 camera through via DHL. Ordered it direct from ZWO Optical on AliExpress and paid £250, then had to pay an extra £19 on import duty etc. But still a bit cheaper than buying from 365Astronomy – they were also out of stock at time of ordering. The

Read More →

QHY5 vs DMK21 for Guiding

I have always used my QHY5 for guiding, most of the time attached to a Skywatcher 9×50 finderscope and it has worked quite well. But while at Kelling Heath this year I purchased an Altair Astro 80mm guidescope. Did I need to? I don’t know, may be a 60mm would have been a good upgrade

Read More →