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iOptron SmartStar E R80 budget goto

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Last month I purchased the iOptron SmartStar E R80 available from Amazon as part of my work on a new book I am working on and needed a low budget solution for AP and this iOptron telescope seemed to fit the bill. You can’t really write about budget AP if you are using thousands of dollars worth of mounts and scopes to get the images, now can you? So after looking around I decided on this iOptron SmartStar for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that it uses a side mount so the camera presents… Continue reading

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Orion SkyView Pro mount review

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A short while back I decided I wanted another EQ goto mount so I picked up a lightly used Orion SkyView Pro telescope mount (SVP). Why the Orion SkyView Pro? 1) Carries more load than my Orion SkyView Deluxe, so better suited for my 127mm refractor 2) Tripod, weights and hand controller interchangeable with my Orion Sirius in case anything happens 3) Uses same interface, drivers and cables for computer control so I am already set up to use it with my laptops 4) OK, yes, I am kind of an Orion fanboy, but with their good products and excellent customer… Continue reading

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Happy holidays!

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Tis the season to be jolly, freeze your rear off out in the cold, and spend way too much on astronomy releated presents. Oh yeah, and to celebrate Christmas / Hanukkah / Kwanzaa / Ashura / Etc. What better way to celebrate when you are an astrophotographer than to image the Christmas Tree Cluster, NGC 2264: This is one you need to spend a little time with, in my case 36 200sec (2 hours) images were combined with 25 darks and carefully stretched in Pixinsite to create a wonderful image full of colors, dust clouds and dark lanes. Notice the Cone… Continue reading

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M78, a surprising little area of the sky

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Sometimes there are targets that just really surprise you, the M78 nebula is one of them. In the charts and books I have it just looked really plain and boring. Granted, in none of the images I had did anyone really put much time and effort into the target. Described as a diffuse nebula, and in most images showing only two small amounts of nebulosity much like this (35 minutes total data): With almost nothing there but too little wisps of dust, can you blame anyone for not putting much time on the Messier 78? I certainly didn’t want to… Continue reading

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Comet 168p Hergenrother and Halloween

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On the 12th of this month Comet 168p Hergenrother came very close to us and was quite bright so I decided to image it. The comet was roughly between alpha (Alpheratz) and beta Pegasi (Scheat), about 25% from alpha to beta and is approximately the distance from Earth as Mars. There are two basic ways to image comets, the first is track the stars so that the comet  streaks across the image: The second method stacks the images so that the comet appears to sit still as the stars streak across the sky: Either way (or through the 11inch SCT we viewed it through) Comet… Continue reading

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Endeavour’s last flight

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This past week I was fortunate enough to be in Houston when the Space Shuttle Endeavour was flown through on its way to California. I have never been lucky enough to actually see one of the shuttles in person so I made the quick trip to the other side of town to shoot a few images of this space shuttle viewing put on by NASA. It was truely awe inspiring. To think, this shuttle right in front of me has been launched into orbit 25 times, over two hundred and fifty miles high each time, traveled over 122,000,000 miles and… Continue reading

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Explore Scientific AR127 review

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I recently bought an Explore Scientific AR127 (sometimes called the ES127 or just ES AR127) and thought I would add my experiences to the other ES AR127 reviews. Back in October I bought an Orion 90mm f/11 scope to do visual. I didn’t want to spend much because I really don’t do much visual and didn’t have much of a desire to. Recently I have been wanting something a little more, a little larger. Not too large mind you because it won’t fit in the car with all the AP rig already in there (and I drive a full size… Continue reading