Astrophotography

EAGLE is the control and power unit for telescopes and astrophotography that changed the game in the way astrophotographers record pictures of the Universe. By including a full Windows 10 Enterprise computer with 8 USB ports, 7 power out ports also for dew heaters and remote control capabilities (both with WiFi and Ethernet) in a special case designed to be used as a structural element of your telescope, the EAGLE improved astro imaging session of Gauthier. Interviewed by Filippo in this video, Gauthier talks about his experience in astrophotography and shows how the EAGLE allows him to be more productive, controlling all his devices also in remote sessions during intercontinental flights!

Continue reading →

Partial lunar eclipse of July 16th in Italy gave us a great opportunity to test the new Borg 90FL f3.9 fluorite apochromatic refractor with ESATTO 3” microfocuser and, thanks to its extreme portability, we moved to Dolomites, one of the most beautiful part in the italian Alps and Unesco World Heritage! Here our challenge was to take a picture of the partially eclipsed Moon just raising from the Dolomites, take a look at the video and discover how we did it!

Continue reading →

Choosing from various astrophotography camera for the deep-sky may seem complicated. In this article, through a series of practical examples, we will see how to choose astrophotography camera to record also the weakest details of galaxies, nebulae and star clusters through with long exposures (these camera are different from those used for planetary and lunar photography that record short videos and which we will discuss in a later article). Astrophotography camera for the deep-sky are almost always cooled, ie have a system with Peltier cells which cools and stabilizes the sensor at a low temperature in order to reduce the noise of the image and therefore improve its quality.

Continue reading →

Does light pollution affect astrophotography? How much? Since about three years ago I started in astrophotography, I always heard that the only possible images from lowland were the narrow band ones, that is H-alpha, Oxygen III and Sulphur. All because of the poor quality of the sky because of light pollution that Italy unfortunately holds the record in Europe (in the negative sense of course). Therefore, for some time, I worked exclusively with interference filters that enabled me to produce, in all, good quality images, imaging from my house placed on the lowland at the border between Friuli and Veneto.

Continue reading →

When we use a camera to take a normal picture, we can select the magnification which best suits the object of our image, switching from wide-angle shots (for example 20mm focal length) to higher magnification shots (for example 200mm focal length). This freedom of choice is not possible in astrophotography as, due to telescopes special optical design and the specific characteristics of the objects they are used for, they need a fixed focal length that can be varied with the use of additional accessories but only to some extent.

Continue reading →

Astrophotography is the technique that allows to obtain great images of the Universe's bodies: from the planets to the Moon, from galaxies to nebula , from the Sun to the star clusters. Astrophotography of some objects may be simple while for other , especially because of their low brightness, it's more difficult and may require special instruments and techniques. Thanks to the digital revolution that went in photography in the last 10 years, astrophotography made ​​great steps forward, and everyone can get great pictures of the universe using the right instruments.

Continue reading →

PHD Guiding is a free software among the most used for autoguiding since it's very easy to use. In this tutorial we will explain how to set up this software using an Atik TITAN camera but the same steps can also be made using other autoguiding cameras.

Continue reading →