The aim of Telescope Live is to make astrophotography accessible to all. It does this by having tier based subscriptions available as bronze, silver, gold, platinum and diamond. With the bronze membership costing only £4 per month, it’s certainly an attractive option to many astrophotographers who aren’t fortunate enough to live in areas with over 250 clear nights each year – in fact, as I write this, I haven’t had a clear sky for over a month!
Winter is an exciting time in astrophotography. Not only are the nights longer, but there are some of the absolute best deep sky astrophotography targets available to image at this time of year!
This is a list that is accessible for everyone, no matter what equipment you’re using. You might think there are some obvious targets missing from the list, so do leave a comment to let me know what your favourite winter astrophotography targets are!
Is astrophotography hard? Well honestly, it depends.
Seriously though, if you want to be an astrophotographer you need to be so many things. I don’t say this to put anyone off, just to set expectations going in. This is hobby is hard but it’s equally so rewarding. When you get it right the universe will repay you 10-fold – I promise.
I’ve put together a small list of tips. This list could’ve easily been 20 long so I’ve tried to pull out ones that I found to be the key to my own astrophotography and I hope you find them useful.
While I personally enjoy the summer months for the BBQs and warm weather, it’s not the best time of year for astrophotography at my latitude due to the loss of astro dark. However, for those of you at lower latitudes … Read More
The first images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) were released earlier this week. As with other NASA missions, they have made this data available to the public so that we can have our own go at processing these incredible images! And it’s absolutely free!
At the time of writing, downloading these files isn’t as simple as pressing a download button on a webpage. It requires opening a .sh file, which is a Unix shell script file that Windows cannot read natively. All is not lost, however, us Windows users can still download this data! We just have to go through an extra hoop to get it.
I think power is a topic that’s often over looked and not something you see spoken about very much in this hobby. Maybe that’s because it’s obvious, but like everything in astrophotography, I think it’s anything but obvious because there are multiple ways to approach this.
In this post I’m going to break down how I power my gear at home and then explain other options that are available to you.
For astrophotographers, Spring means the start of Galaxy season! Called as such due to the vast amount of galaxies available to image – clear skies permitting! Below I have compiled a list of my favourite astrophotography Galaxy season targets for any telescope.
There’s something for all focal lengths here, whether that be getting multiple galaxies in the same field of view (FOV) with a modest setup, or getting really up close and personal to a distant galaxy with a bigger scope and pulling out the amazing detail in the dust lanes. You can see which options will work for your equipment by using free software such as Stellarium to plan your imaging session.
The Sky-Watcher EvoGuide 50ED and ZWO ASI120MM Mini auto guiding bundle is a popular choice among astrophotographers. Not only is the price reasonable, but the quality of the guide scope and camera are second to none. As a 2-inch refractor with FPL53 glass, the EvoGuide 50ED could also double as an astrophotography telescope if you purchased the dedicated field flattener to give that nice flat field from corner to corner! I’ve been using this guide scope and camera since Summer 2020 so I thought it was time to let you know my thoughts on this auto guiding bundle.
The Optolong L-eXtreme filter has narrow 7nm band passes in the Hydrogen alpha (Ha) and Oxygen III (OIII) lines, unlike the older Optolong L-eNhance, which also has a band pass at the Hydrogen beta (Hb) line. The Optolong L-eXtreme will block out that extra bit of light pollution by omitting the Hb line, while retaining all the detail from emission nebulae by capturing the targets in Ha and OIII.
