Anthony's Astrophotography

Hi Everyone,

It has been a very long time since I have had a chance to get out and image let alone update my blog. In that time a lot has changed so I will try and bring you up to speed.

Firstly, I have not posted any images from last years Astrofest, I will be sure to do so soon as I have some of my best images from that event. I have just finished this years Astrofest (whata great week) and I have sold the EQ8 Mount. Why I hear you ask? While I loved that mount and it performed great it is just too heavy for me. I have since I last updated had a back injury (fractured my spine a while back) and am unable to set it up and pull it down without significant pain after the fact and given I do not have a permanent set up this was an issue.

So where am I up to now, I have down sized to the Sky Watcher AZ-EQ6 and must say I am very pleased with it, while it is not in the same arena as the EQ8 in terms of performance it is more than suitable for my needs and have managed to get some great images on it (I will also post these shortly). I need to update my equipment page as I now have some new toys, so I have upgraded to a GSO RC10 and am selling the RC8, I just wanted a bit more light grasp and this scope does that. I have also invested in a Celestron Off Axis Guider to go with it and a Moonlite focuser with Stepped motor. These combined on the AZ-EQ6 have resulted in some of my best images to date.

I am dabbling now with Sequence Generator Pro to see if I can get even better images and sharper more consistent focus through the night as well as some other bits and pieces such as APT (Astro Photographers Tool), this software a couple of years ago was pretty basic and not very intuitive so I went down the Backyard EOS path, I have since seen and purchased APT as there has been a lot of work done on this software and it looks great as well as being very stable. It is worth having a look.

I am going to be doing a full collimation of my RC10 as it was a bit off from the shop so will see if I can write an article explaining how I did it and how well it went! Wish me luck.

Well that pretty much brings thing up to where they are today, sorry for no posting for over a year (where does the time go???) I will try and be more consistent in future.

Cheers

Anthony