Camera rotators are today primarily used to frame the target when taking Astrophotos. With the newest high-resolution camera rotators, it is now possible to take perfectly tracked Astrophotos with an Alt-Az type telescope mount. Why bother doing that? Well, it means faster setup with no polar alignment and undisturbed imaging from east to west, with no meridian flip to worry about. Read on and learn how it’s done… Let’s start with a fast summary of how it works: Step-by-step procedure for an imaging session with an Alt-Az mount with a camera rotator Set up the mount and telescope. No levelling of the tripod is needed. Install and connect the imaging gear as usual: Main camera, filter wheel, […]

“If you are able to observe all 110 objects during one single night – from dusk to dawn – you have completed a Messier Marathon.” This is the main definition of a Messier Marathon. There can be different versions of a Messier Marathon: The old style is completely analogue Messier Marathon: Using just a telescope, eyepiece and printed sky maps. A visual Messier Marathon using setting circles and perhaps goto to centre the objects An Electronic Assisted Astronomy (EAA)  Messier Marathon where the objects are observed with a camera I know there are opinions about what is the right way to […]

EAA (Electronic Assisted Astronomy) is Astrophotography kept simple – Alt-Az mounts are tracking mounts kept simple – A perfect match   I define EAA as taking short exposure astrophotos and displaying them live. Typically the setup is simple with a One Shot Colour Camera on a telescope carried by a tracking mount. Stacking on the fly of more short exposures is often used. This will make the image improve over time as more frames are added to the stack. When the image is as wished, it is time to move on to observe another target. It is Live –  It is simple. It is a great way to “Observe” faint objects and show them to the general audience when doing outreach. The mounting for EAA […]

Keep warm indoors, and sleep all night – the automated system will collect light all night. Automating your astro-imaging is getting easier and easier all the time. New hardware and software solutions become available for the dedicated amateur astronomer. In this post, I will tell how I have used the software NINA – Nighttime Imaging ‘N’ Astronomy to automate my imaging setup. With the automated setup, I can start up all the equipment in 5 minutes. Then I select and start a premade session for the night. That’s it. I went back inside waiting for the subs to show up. Here is what the session script does: Slew telescope to target Recenter and rotates FOV to requested position based on plate solve. Perform autofocus Calibrates and starts the autoguider […]

Alt-Az mount Astrophotography – easier than ever It’s getting easier and easier to use Alt-Az mounts for Astrophotography (AP). You don’t have to bother with levelling and polar alignment, so you can set it up very fast and easily. With the many new computer devices, it is also possible to control the system remotely. Most Alt-Az mounts can be used for short exposure AP as they are. When you want to take longer exposures you need a field de-rotator. In this article, I will explain how you can use the ASIAIR Pro computer unit to automate the imaging process. Most things are general for any […]