Category Archives: Equipment

The Astrotrac system and the Canon 40D

Coming back from a short break in Devon I was pleased to find the tripod and accessories for the Astrotrac had arrived.  It was also good to find that all the threads were compatible with fixing the Astrotrac to the … Continue reading

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The Panosaurus arrives at the NFO

Well it has rained and/or been cloudy every day since the Coathanger image was taken.  You can almost believe there is a higher order deliberately out to frustrate the fun I can have with the new Hyperstar III.  Never mind, … Continue reading

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Robofocus update

The Robofocus guys are getting a new website together and asked for photos of the Robofocus on customers’ systems.  This is how the Robofocus looks on my Tak Sky 90 which is piggy-backed on the Celestron Nexstar 11 GPS. The … Continue reading

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GigaPixel Images

Two weeks ago I bought a Canon 40D DSLR camera for terrestrial work.  While playing with this beast it struck me that by using the same mosaic techniques that we use in creating big deep-sky panoramas – we could actually … Continue reading

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Photoshop CS3 Upgrade

At 8.00 a.m. this morning an upgrade to Photoshop CS3 arrived.  Within half an hour I was creating mosaics from frames that Photoshop CS2 simply couldn’t handle.  The image below is a 15-framer, stitched together perfectly by CS3.  This upgrade … Continue reading

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The Totally Amazing Hyperstar Concept

When I originally bought the Celestron Nexstar 11 GPS Schmidt-Cassegrain reflector way back in April-May 2002, I did so because it could use the highly innovative Hyperstar lens, and at that time there was no Meade equivalent. The Hyperstar is … Continue reading

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An introduction to narrowband Filters

In a few of my posts about imaging you will see me mention “narrowband data” and words like “OIII” and “H-alpha”.  Well, this is to do with narrowband light filters and line emission sources of light [as opposed to broadband emitters].  For … Continue reading

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