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…
Software and tools for command and control. Automation of image capturing and telescope control.
It snowed last night and it is very cold today. The Sun is suppose to come out this afternoon and the sky is suppose to be clear tonight. Hopefully I can get the SeeStar out for a bit. As storms like this…
Very cold, very clear, and a very bright 80% waxing Moon high in the sky. Didn’t want to fight the Moon with any long exposure light gathering so I decided to do a bit of EAA observing with the SeeStar S50 to…
I stumbled upon this open source project, seestar_alp, which allows remote control of a SeeStar S50 using a web interface called the Simple SeeStar Controller (SSC) running on a Raspberry Pi (there are options for Windows and Mac as well). The Simple…
Lightbucket is a Nighttime Imaging ‘N’ Astronomy (N.I.N.A. or NINA) plugin which logs information about NINA imaging session. When enabled and configured details about NINA imaging sessions are automatically sent to Lightbucket each time a sequence image is saved. The Lightbucket website…
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…
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…
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…
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…
First light and a chance to test out my sequence using the NINA mini-pc build sequencer on 5/31/2024 shooting M 94, the Cat’s Eye Galaxy. The NINA sequencer is somewhat complicated but extremely versatile. There really is a lot to this astrophotography…