Recently I found out that a number of Toronto libraries have 3D printers available to the public. Printing there is extremely cheap. A fee of $0.10 per one gram of filament (printing material) is charged for each print job. Your only task is to find a model to print. Luckily, thingsverse.com is a website that has […]
Category Archives: Gear
Fastest and cheapest polar alignment method
Instead of spending on a polemaster, Im gonna try attaching the QHY5LII-M to the back of the orion 8×40 finderscope and use the SharpCap polar aligning feature. My ST80 has too narrow field of view as Sharpcap needs between 1 and 4 deg FOV. To attach the camera, I unscrewed the eyepiece part of the […]
Trying out planetary imaging
I finally received my Televue 3x Barlow. This will allow me to get my focal ratio from the native f5 on my 6″ reflector closer to f18, which is required for imaging planets. With the new barlow the imaging train will be at f18 and over 2500mm focal length, and I will be able to […]
Fixing Field Curvature using Reducer Corrector
I purchased a second hand reducer corrector for my ED80. It cost almost as much as the refractor itself, but its worth it To flatten the field and also to increase your f/ratio, the ED80 offers a dedicated Reducer/Corrector 0.85x. Not only does it lower the f/ratio of the scope from f7.5 to f6.3, but […]
The path to Guiding
Entry level equatorial mounts don’t tack accurately for longer than 60 seconds. It gets even harder to track precisely with longer focal lengths. Guiding is the answer and my next major goal in improving the astrophotography setup. By guiding, you can keep exposing for much longer times (5-15min and even beyond). That will allow you […]
Building a Flat Frame Box
Stacking images to increase SNR (signal to noise ratio) is a fundamental task of astrophotography. Aside from the light frames, which are the actual image data, there are also 4 types of calibration frames: Bias, Darks, Flats and Dark Flats. In order to remove vignetting and any uneven field illumination caused by dust or smudges found […]
Lesson learned the hard way
After driving 3 hours to a Bortle 2 site, I setup my gear and was planning on staying the whole night imaging targets. Since this was my first planned all-night imaging session, I never expected that my imaging would come to a halt an hour into my first object. As I was inspecting the subs, […]
Connecting DSLR to Telescope
In order to connect your DSLR to a telescope, you typically need two adapters: T-Ring (Nikon/Canon specific) 1.25″ or 2″ adapter (depending on the drawtube size of your focuser) I purchased this set, which includes both, along with an extension tube that sometimes is necessary to extend the focal plane, in order for the camera […]