I hadn’t had opportunities to observe a total solar eclipse before 2017, but I knew I wanted to try my hand at photographing it. And photograph it I did! Composite of the total eclipse of August 2017 Before that though, I did some research and captured notes and a simple, fine-grained order of operations, because I didn’t know what I was doing and it’s not something you can really try over again if you fail.

I love a good star chart. Maybe because I got started with astronomy and astrophotography with visual observation and a box full of star charts when I was in high school, and I’ve never really found digital planning as satisfying as laying out a physical chart on a table. But that’s not what this post is about. What it’s about is that I want to generate star charts for this website based on my images, mostly because it seems like an interesting problem, and because I want to control the aesthetics of the charts, which means they need to be in SVG (or otherwise stylable).

I wrote about my return to using my German Equatorial Mount, refractor, and Canon DSLR in my last blog post. Since then I’ve refreshed both my mount and my reactor. In many way’s it’s the opposite of the lightweight setup I wanted a year ago, but what I realized I wanted was simpliciy. This gives me that, of a sort: Losmandy GM-8 German equatorial mount with Gemini 2 Astro-Tech AT115EDT 115mm ED triplet refractor with 0.

After my experiments with a lighterweight astrophotography setup ended in a bit of failure, I’ve gone back to a fairly tried-and-true setup for myself: Orion SkyViewPro computerized German Equatorial Mount Orion ED80 APO 80mm refractor Orion StarShoot Autoguider Sky-Watcher 0.85 focal reducer for ED80 I’ve been able to control the telescope and autoguider from a computer (both using laptop and a Raspberry Pi attached to the telescope), but where I’ve struggled in the recent past is in controlling my Fujifilm cameras from that same computer.

I wrote earlier this year that my biggest blocker to regularly engaging with my astrophotography hobby is: [A] fundamental laziness I have when it comes to setting up and taking down my equipment. This is the biggest blocker I find to just getting out and doing. This inspired me to rethink: what if I assembled a lighter-weight, more portable, less cumbersome astrophotography setup using my (beefy, carbon fiber) camera tripod, a polar mount (first the Vixen Polarie I’ve had for a while, then the iOptron SkyGuider Pro), maybe throw my autoguider on there, and hey presto!

After considering my mount as part of my lightweight re-think of my astrophotography setup, I need to consider my optical and imaging setup. Currently I use an Orion ED80 f/7.5 refractor. The ED80 has a focal length of 600mm, and weighs 2.6kg. To this I add a 0.85 focal reducer/corrector that adds 320g and reduces the focal length to 510mm.

The first part of my lightweight re-think of my astrophotography setup has to be my mount. I’ve been using an Orion SkyView Pro GoTo. It’s been a good little, reasonably lightweight (as decent goto mounts go), and has done the job well — I haven’t felt it incapable of what I needed. The mount, counterweight, and tripod weigh around 17kg total when set up, and have a maximum capacity of 15kg. 17kg is… not insignificant.

Astrophotography has been an off/on hobby of mine for almost twenty years. In that time I’ve taken a few images a really like, and many I don’t. Typically I go through periods of enthusiasm and frustration, both with gear, weather, and my own limitations.

One thing that does recur is a fundamental laziness I have when it comes to setting up and taking down my equipment. This is the biggest blocker I find to just getting out and doing. I’ve thought about putting in a permanent pier, so that I don’t have to mess around as much with the tripod and mount alignment, but that’s not the only problem I have. It’s also somewhat hard to travel with my setup. I downsized about 10 years ago from an 8” Schmidt-Cassegrain to an 80mm refractor, and that helped, but given how I frequently I’ve gone out over the past few years, I thought it might be time again.

My Slow Motion Messier Marathon has become even slower. Five years since the last update, I have another update! This one is less impressive.

The slowness of my Slow Motion Messier Marathon continues to impress me. Since my last update I have a few new photos and few do-overs:

My Slow Motion Messier Marathon continues more slowly than I anticipated. But since the last update I have two new photos:

Since I declared my intention to begin a Slow Motion Messier Marathon I haven’t gotten as far along as I had hoped. I do have some updates, however:

It’s been a long-time goal of mine to do a Messier Marathon. I missed my window of opportunity again this year, and the reality is that the time investment required during the month of March is probably not realistic for me in the coming few years.