Exploring the Suffolk Virginia Night Sky – Astronomy, Astrophotography, Telescopes, EAA – Planets and Stars and Nebula and Galaxies – Looking, Learning, Sharing… Let's see what we can see…
Telescopes, Cameras, and other Astronomy Gear
A buddy and fellow amateur astrophotographer suggested this method of parking the telescope with the OTA facing down to help keep dust, dew, and frost off the primary objective of the telescope. This can be accomplished by setting a custom park position…
The last few weeks there has been a lot of buzz in different forums about the impending release of the new SeeStar, the ZWO SeeStar S30. Last night the official details on the SeeStar S50’s little brother were finally released and the…
I picked up the Gemini Automatic Star Focuser Pro for the AT66ED so that I can change scopes between the SV503 102ED and the AT66ED without having to remove and refit the electronic focuser. I have used the focuser for a couple…
Was hoping to capture some far away light using the AT66ED setup, but the clouds moved in pretty quick after dark. The forecast earlier in the day looked OK, but it worsened as the day went on. It was pretty clear through…
Since I am primarily using NINA on the mini-PC to control my astronomy imaging sessions I have a few Raspberry Pis which are currently idle. I still have one built up for INDI Server so I can still use KStars/Ekos if I…
I have had my Astro-Tech AT66ED for a good long while (I think I got it back in 2009 or so). It is a great little scope, but unfortunately it has been in the case for a couple years (pretty much since…
This is a really neat project which is integrated directly with Nightime Imaging ‘N’ Astronomy (NINA) using a plugin. To enable this integration simply install and configure the Lightbucket plugin. Once the Lightbucket plugin configured with an API key the information about…
The NINA Imaging Dashboard provides a one stop display of command and control information for a NINA imaging session: gear connections, camera control, mount information, guiding statistics, image statistics and history, focus, sequence progress, and more. NINA’s Imaging Dashboard is also very…
Happy Friday! Looks like we might have some clear skies this weekend… of course it will be lit up by the light of the full Moon. In this Friday morning post I wanted to take a few minutes to introduce a couple…
It is helpful to have current weather information during an observing session. I typically record the current temperature, humidity, and cloud cover in my observation session logs. Weather data can be obtained from a few different sources. In this post I am…