Photographing the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula
As the season transitions from summer to fall, the nights have become longer and cooler in the backyard. This is beneficial for deep sky astrophotography for many reasons, with more time to capture exposure time on incredible targets like the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula being one of them. For those that have been following my YouTube Channel, you’ll know that I’ve been testing out a new APO refractor telescope, the Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED. I was shocked to see just how many of my subscribers were already using and enjoying this exact telescope for astrophotography. In the following post…
The Impressive Pegasus Astro Pocket Powerbox (Review)
The Pegasus Astro Pocket Powerbox is an ingenious device that allows you to streamline your deep sky astrophotography setup. The goal of this little blue box is to replace your current mess of power cables running to various devices on your telescope with a single, lightweight power source. The Pocket Powerbox includes (4) 12V outlets that I use to send power to the various devices riding along with my telescope. This includes everything from my dew heater band to my primary imaging camera. The device came with all of the cables I needed in the box, which was a pleasant surprise. It…
ZWO ASI294MC Pro Review (Color Astrophotography Camera)
The ZWO ASI294 MC Pro is a remarkably capable one-shot-color CMOS camera for deep sky astrophotography. Whether you use it for broadband true-color images on a moonless night or ultra-long-exposure images using your favorite narrowband filter - this camera can produce insanely beautiful images. This is easily one of the best color cameras I have ever used for astrophotography, and my go-to choice for a night of deep sky imaging. Over the past 6 months, I have used this camera extensively through a number of telescopes in the backyard and beyond. Here is a taste of what the ASI294MC Pro…
Upgrading My Computer for Astrophotography
The past 48 hours have been a whirlwind of software downloads, driver updates and even a last minute run to the computer store (for a new USB to RS232 cable) I am happy to report that the journey was one of the best decisions I’ve made in a long time to advance my progress in this incurable addiction we call deep sky astrophotography. As I write this - my camera is recording impressive unguided 2-minute images of the North America Nebula using the new PC. NGC 7000 - 26 Minutes of Exposure Time (13 x 2 minutes) The new computer has inspired me to bring my old equatorial mount out of…
