May09

ASTRONOMY

TECHNOLOGY TODAY Your Complete Guide to Astronomical Equipment

THE STILETTO IV PRO • DEEP SKY PRINTING • NEIL FLEMING THE ORION 190-MM MAKSUTOV-NEWTONIAN • AN ATM FOCUS-MOTOR CONTROLLER THE WILLIAMS OPTICS EASY TOUCH ALT-AZ MOUNT

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Contents Industry News

Cover Story -39 The star-trail image capture by John Moody demonstrates just one of the many DSLR astro-imaging techniques described in his article, Getting Started in Astrophotography with DSLR Cameras.

His accompanying article on the Stiletto IV Pro focus system explores one of the more popular options for achieving accurate focus with those increasingly popular cameras. Canon’s 5D and 5D Mark II Digital SLRs are but two of the conventional digital cameras now used by astrophotographers to capture everything from wide-field images of entire stellar vistas to high-resolution images of the faintest nebulae.

14 NEAF 2009 NEAF 2009 Best Year Yet! 17 Terra iPhone Application 17 SKY SHED Wayne Parker Shares Astronomy and with Troops in Afghanistan

61 The Orion 190-mm Maksutov-Newtonian A Fast, Flat-Field, Large-Aperture, and Yet Affordable Astrograph

By James R. Dire. Ph.D.

17 APM TELESCOPES New North American Office

39 Getting Started In Astrophotography With DSLR Cameras It’s Easier Than You Might Think!

By John Moody

65 An ATM Focus-Motor Controller Keep Things in Focus

By Rick Saunders

19 FAINTFUZZIES.COM Free Downloadable Observing Guides

47 The Stiletto IV Pro Achieving Sharp Focus with DSLR Cameras

By John Moody

66 The Williams Optics Easy Touch ALT-AZ Mount Easy To Use, Easy To Recommend!

By Erik Wilcox

51 Deep Sky Printing Displaying Your Favorite Astrophotos at Their Best

By Craig Stark

68 Astro Tips, Tricks, & Novel Solutions A Spirited Solution to Leveling Mounts

By Barry Simon

In This Issue 12 Editor’s Note Still Learning…

By Gary Parkerson

18 SOCIETY OF AMATEUR RADIO ASTRONOMERS Announces Student Grant Program

20 SPRINGERWIEN NEW YORK Now Shipping Star Vistas 21 IP4AP.COM Announces Photoshop Foundations Intermediate Part 2 22 NIGHT VISION ASTRONOMY To Produce and Market BIPH

57 Neil Fleming Astro-Imaging Tutor Extraordinaire

By Dave Snay 23 THE GALILEOSCOPE A IYA 2009 Cornerstone Project Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

9

Contributing Writers Dr. James Dire has an M.S. in physics from the University of Central Florida and a M.A. and Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University, both in planetary science, and is an associate provost and a professor of physics and astronomy at Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Spring, N.C. He has played a key role in several observatory projects including the Powell Observatory, which houses a 30-inch (0.75-m) Newtonian, rebuilding and installing an 8-inch (0.20-m) Alvin Clark refractor in a new observatory built for it at the Naval Academy, and was the initial director of the Coast Guard Academy Astronomical Observatory in Stonington, CT, which houses a 20-inch (0.51-m) Ritchey-Cretien Cassegrain telescope.

John Moody is a computer programmer/analyst who became interested in astronomy as a youngster when a family friend/amateur gave him a homemade Newtonian scope.

He got back into the hobby a few years ago and was bitten by the imaging bug. When not imaging the sky from Panther Creek Observatory in Southwest Missouri, he can be found observing visually, drag racing, tinkering or taking non-astro photos.

Rick Saunders is an amateur astronomer, inveterate tinkerer and member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, London Centre. His passion is DSLR imaging and on cloudy nights he spends his time designing and building equipment to help further that passion.

Barry Simon lives in New Orleans, LA, and is a longtime officer and active member of the Pontchartrain Astronomy Society and the founder of the Deep South Regional StarGaze, now in its 27th year. Special interests include binocular astronomy and refractor repair and refurbishment. He also serves as moderator of several on-line astronomy related discussion groups, including BinocularAstronomy and UnitronTelescopes. O-scale railroading is another strong interest.

David Snay is a retired software engineer living in central Massachusetts. He graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and has been an astronomer and astrophotographer for more than 10 years. David currently pursues fine art photography, specializing in traditional black/white images.

Craig Stark, Ph.D. is, by day, a professor whose research involves trying to pull faint signals out of noisy, moving images of people’s brains. By night, he is an amateur astrophotographer and operates Stark Labs which provides software to help users pull faint signals out of noisy, moving images of the heavens.

Erik Wilcox has been observing the sky for more than 20 years and recently started a new forum at www.starstuffforums.com. When he’s not viewing the sky, he sings and plays guitar in a rock band.

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www.AstronomyTechnologyToday.com 10

Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

Contents New Products 24 VIXEN OPTICS Trio of New Products 26 APOGEE INSTRUMENTS New High-Cooled Series D09F Camera Housing 27 DEEPSKY CORPORATION Deepsky Imaging for Video CCD Capture and Processing 28 SCOPESTUFF Wireless Go-To Connection for LX200, Celestron and ServoCat 29 KNIGHTWARE Releases SQM Reader Pro 30 APM TELESCOPES 2.5-inch Field Flattener for Apos 31 OPTEC 3-Inch Corrector for Meade 16-Inch SCTs 31 ORION TELESCOPES & BINOCULARS Two New Ritchey-Chretien Astrograph Telescopes 32 ORION TELESCOPES & BINOCULARS More New Products for SpringSummer 2009 34 CATSEYE COLLIMATION Next Generation Infinity XLK Autocollimator 35 DENKMEIER OPTICAL New Systems for Lunt 60-mm Solar Scopes 35 QHYCCD QHY8 Pro 6.0 MP One-Shot Color CCD 36 TELE VUE OPTICS Ethos Line Grows to Five 37 SKYHOUND SkyTools 3 and SkyTools 3 Pro Edition 37 FOSTER SYSTEMS AMC-101 WeatherSentry Weather Monitor

The Supporting

CAST

The Companies And Organizations That Have Made Our Magazine Possible!

We wish to thank our advertisers without whom this magazine would not be possible. When making a decision on your next purchase, we encourage you to consider these advertisers’ commitment to you by underwriting this issue of Astronomy Technology Today.

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Camera Concepts www.cameraconcepts.com page 30 Catseye Collimation www.catseyecollimation.com page 64 CCD-LABS www.ccd-labs.com page 63

Hands On Optics www.handsonoptics.com page 5 InnerPlanetary Products www.innerplanetaryproducts.com page 58 Innovations in Travel www.innovationsintravel.com page 27

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Oceanside Photo and Telescope www.optcorp.com page 41 Optec www.optecinc.com page 23 Optical Mechanics www.opticalmechanics.com page 35 Orion Telescopes and Bionoculars www.oriontelescopes.com page 77, 80 Optic-Craft Machining www.opticcraft.com page 22 Optic Wave Laboratories www.opticwavelabss.com page 71 Ostahowski Optics www.ostahowskioptics.com page 66 PlaneWave Instruments www.planewaveinstruments.com page 78 ProtoStar www.fpi-protostar.com page 20 Quantum Scientific Imaging www.qsimaging.com page 4 Rigel Systems www.rigelsys.com page 28

Sirius Observatories www.siriusobservatories.com page 36 Skyhound www.skyhound.com page 59 SkyShed Observatories www.skyshed.com page 68 Spike-A www.spike-a.com page 64 Starizona www.starizona.com page 3 Stark Labs www.stark-labs.com page 26 Stellar Technologies International www.stellar-international.com page 53 Tele Vue Optics www.televue.com page 8, 73 Unihedron www.unihedron.com page 45 Van Slyke Instruments www.observatory.org page 25

Deep Sky Printing www.deepskyprinting.com page 20

JMI Telescopes www.jmitelescopes.com page 16

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Scope City www.scopecity.com page 55

Wood Wonders www.wood-wonders.com page 64

Denkmeier Optical www.deepskybinoviewer.com page 48

Lumicon www.lumicon.com page 19

ScopeGuard www.scopeguard.com page 70

Woodland Hills Telescopes www.telescopes.net page 18

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ASTRONOMY

TECHNOLOGY TODAY

Volume 3 • Issue 3 May-June 2009 Publisher Stuart Parkerson

Managing Editor Gary Parkerson

Associate Editors Russ Besancon Karol Birchfield Jessica Parkerson

Art Director Lance Palmer

Staff Photographer Jim Osborne

Web Master Richard Harris

3825 Gilbert Drive Shreveport, Louisiana 71104

e d t

info@astronomytechnologytoday.com www.astronomytechnologytoday.com Astronomy Technology Today is published monthly by Parkerson Publishing, LLC. Bulk rate postage paid at Dallas, Texas, and additional mailing offices. ©2008 Parkerson Publishing, LLC, all rights reserved. No part of this publication or its Web site may be reproduced without written permission of Parkerson Publishing, LLC. Astronomy Technology Today assumes no responsibility for the content of the articles, advertisements, or messages reproduced therein, and makes no representation or warranty whatsoever as to the completeness, accuracy, currency, or adequacy of any facts, views, opinions, statements, and recommendations it reproduces. Reference to any product, process, publication, or service of any third party by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not constitute or imply the endorsement or recommendation of Astronomy Technology Today.

The publication welcomes and encourages contributions; however is not responsible for the return of manuscripts and photographs. The publication, at the sole discretion of the publisher, reserves the right to accept or reject any advertising or contributions. For more information contact the publisher at Astronomy Technology Today, 3825 Gilbert Drive, Shreveport, Louisiana 71104, or e-mail at info@astronomytechnologytoday.com.

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Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

Editor’s

Note

Gary Parkerson, Managing Editor

STILL LEARNING… I once walked 54 holes of golf in a single day and carried my bag the entire time. Of course, reality set in the day after and I invested in a pull cart to avoid its recurrence. Although not nearly as strenuous as that long-ago golf outing, the physical aftereffects of one night of viewing at a local star party reminded me recently that what many of us go through to enjoy dark skies can be taxing as well.

Carrying my favorite scope and mount from storage to the old van, and from van to viewing field, only to repeat the process getting it back home and safely sorted, while worth it, wasn’t easy. The 10-inch f/5.6 Newtonian OTA alone weighs more than 60 pounds and makes

for an awkward load.

My back was still sore when I was doing some spring cleaning a few days later and ran across that old pull cart, unused for many years now. I was about to toss it until it dawned on me that it could carry other things round and awkward (I must have seen someone else do this at some point). So, as the photo attests, a dusty old pull cart has a new career. The OTA’s center of gravity matches the height of the cart perfectly and the thing even has straps for securing the scope. After an overnight test run to a local dark site, I’m happy to report that wheels designed to carry clubs safely over more than three miles of golf course are also great for carrying a tooheavy Newt from van to viewing field. The big wheels even handle stairs pretty well – at least better than my unaided back.

The event I attended was the 2009 edition of what was formerly the Baton Rouge Astronomical Society’s Kisatchie Star Party. The star party moved to a new home in Louisiana this year, Hodges Gardens State Park, and, although the weather provided only one clear night, it was a wonderful one and attendance was far better than I expected. It has the main ingredient necessary to every great event – great people – and I recommend you join them if you’re in

the area next spring.

I ran into Barry Simon there and snagged the Astro Tip you’ll see in this issue. In fact, many of the tips, news reports, and feature articles that end up in these pages are born at star parties and I left Hodges Gardens with more than one.

Your Subscription Is Important to Us! When I attend star parties, I try to take enough copies of a recent issue for all there and did the same at Hodges Gardens.

I handed a copy of the March-April issue to one of my favorite fellow star-partiers and was surprised and a bit embarrassed when he apologized for not having gotten around to subscribing to ATT, explaining that it’s simply something he forgets to do when sitting in front of a computer. I told him with all sincerity that he shouldn’t worry – that it didn’t bother me.

The fact is though that we appreciate your purchase of a subscription to this magazine and work very hard to make it worthy of your investment. And while ATT is obviously a labor of love, as most young couples eventually learn, “love don’t pay the bills.” So, from all of us here, “Thank you!” Your investment is critical to the continued success of this publication and I’m foolish indeed to suggest to anyone that it’s not of concern to me. If you’re the next who says to me, “I’ve been meaning to subscribe, but…” be prepared, I’ll be ready with a pocketful of subscription forms – which is also my cue to ask that you tell your friends about ATT. It’s a rare day around here when we don’t receive a message saying, “Just got my first issue and I love the magazine…wish I’d known about it sooner!” So please, be kind to your astro-friends – don’t let them suffer the same regret.

Is It Just Me, Or Is Something Different About This Issue?

As I worked on this column, our publisher called with a pleasant surprise: the page count of the magazine will increase with this issue. How about that?

900GTO German Equatorial Mount with GTOCP3 Control Box

Available Summer 2009

Incredibly Rugged Incredibly Versatile Ultimate in Portability Operate with AC power or 12 volt battery Clutches and setting circles allow manual operation if power is not available Image past the meridian for a long series of exposures without stopping to flip sides Easy alignment for non-critical viewing Components are modular for ease of servicing The keypad is a handheld computer, an external computer not needed Free keypad firmware updates Remote control with personal computer, if desired

With the advent of the CCD camera, amateurs are exploring the skies to an ever increasing level of precision. This new level puts a higher demand on the precision of the equatorial mounting. Many of the finest imagers today have been using our GTO mounts as a solid platform for a wide variety of instruments.

For moderately-sized instruments, the ultimate in capacity and portability is the 900GTO.

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13

INDUSTRYNEWS

NEAF 2009 A Welcome Sign of Economic Recovery as Companies Report Record Sales Image 1

Our year would not be complete without attending NEAF, the NorthEast Astronomy Forum and, while being treated to the latest that our favorite industry has to offer is always a treat, it’s getting to meet so many of you in person that makes attending such a thrill. We were humbled by your kind words and can’t wait to see you again a year from now.

The inaugural issue of Astronomy Technology Today was presented at NEAF 2007, so NEAF 2009 was our third and ATT is now more than two years young and clearly here to stay.

Many of you expressed your relief that the magazine has succeeded despite the challenges currently faced by all print publications and it’s only by virtue of your support that this has been possible.

Thank you!

We delayed printing and shipping of this issue for one week so that we could report a few highlights from NEAF. The event ended on April 19 and the magazine you are now reading was printed and shipped during the week of the 19th, making for an insanely tight schedule for

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Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

any print publication. We could only accomplish this feat by building all but these two pages of this issue, which are, regrettably, far too few to do NEAF 2009 justice. Here’s Image 2 just a taste of what we witnessed there, with much more to follow in the Industry News and New Products sections of the next issue.

We got our first peek through Tele Vue’s latest Ethos, the 10-mm, and its performance was truly as incredible as any in that growing family of hyperwide, supremely-corrected, high-fidelity eyepieces.

You’ll have to try one in person to understand the significance of Tele Vue’s accomplishment – words cannot capture the experience.

Astro-Physics unveiled a first-of-its-kind astrograph, the 305-mm f/3.8 RiccardiHonders (Image 1). The

design is based on Klass Honder’s concept for a fast optical system using a crown-glass objective and meniscus correcting mirror in a Newtonian configuration. By adding a secondary mirror and field lens, Italian designer Massimo Riccardi was able to design an ultra-fast astrograph using only crown-glass elements. Astro-Physics modified the design to create diffractionperformance over a huge 3-degree field that is ideal for capturing large, faint nebulae over a wide wavelength range with essentially perfect color correction from 400 to 1000 nanometers, fully corrected for coma, astigmatism and field curvature. The primary mirror has a rear reflective surface which means that the reflective surface has no scatter and will not degrade due to the exposure to the elements that effect front

INDUSTRYNEWS Image 3

surface mirrors.

Vixen Optics presented the VMC330L mounted on its massive new GAIAX mount (Image 2). The telescope is a unique catadioptric that features two dielectric coated mirrors and two high-precision corrector lenses to provide sharp images with no hint of false color and corrected for spherical aberration and field curvature. The mount has a load capacity of more than 100 pounds, utilizes a high-precision zinc bronze gear, and is controlled by Vixen’s SkySensor 2000 system with 22,000 object database.

Celestron’s new CGEM was on hand, as was the massive CGE Pro mount. Although we had by then studied countless photos of the mounts, both were far more impressive in person and the respective reported payload capacities of 40 and 90 pounds seem decidedly conservative.

NEAF 2009 was also our first chance to see Meade’s ETX-LS. The

scope will be available through Meade dealers by fall of this year.

Howie Glatter presented a remarkably unique and effective mirror support modification for the popular Obsession Dobsonians (Image 3). The “Glatter Sling” is a bolt-on system that incorpo-

rates linear bearings and a stainless cable to eliminate any vestiges of mirror shift within the stock mirror cell and sales of the kit were brisk.

Explore Scientific surprised the crowd with its new 14-mm 100° Series Nitrogen-Purged waterproof eyepiece (Image 4). It is internally sealed and purged with inert, dry-nitrogen gas to prevent internal fogging, to halt the intrusion of fine particulates and fungus, and to maximize the life of the internal coatings. To prove the eyepiece’s unique capabilities, one of the eyepieces was treated to repeated submersion in a fish tank – it performed as promised.

As said, there was far too much to report in this limited space and we promise more detail of NEAF highlights in our next issue. Perhaps the best news from NEAF 2009 was that, despite the constant backdrop of negative economic news, commerce was decidedly brisk at the event, with many vendors enjoying record sales.

Alan Traino and the hundreds of Rockland Astronomy Club volunteers that he coordinates presented a flawless show and, once again, earned our sincere gratitude. Look for us at NEAF 2010!

Image 4

Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

15

INDUSTRYNEWS

TERRA

SKY SHED

Handy New Earth-Phase iPhone Application for Astronomers

Wayne Parker Shares Astronomy and More with Troops in Afghanistan

Terra is a new iPhone application that displays the Earth, its illumination by the Sun, the locations of the Sun and Moon, rising and setting times for the Sun and Moon, the length of the day, the phase of the Moon, distance and bearing between any two points on Earth, as well as sidereal time. It's a pocket calculator for Earth, Sun and Moon.

Terra presents a beautiful image of the Earth, using NASA-sourced day and night photographs to display Earth’s illumination by the Sun in real time. The positions of the Sun and Moon (altitude and azimuth) are shown and the user can spin the globe to view any point. The iPhone’s GPS capability can also be used to pinpoint the user’s current location. In addition, the user can scroll forward or backward to quickly determine Sun and Moon positions for any given time and the rising and setting times for any given date.

Terra will be useful to photographers, trav-

elers, gardeners, architects, radio amateurs, students of astronomy, and anyone else who simply wants to keep up with Earth, Sun and Moon in their relative journeys. Shown is a view of Terra’s Lunar position screen.

Terra is available through the iTunes App Store at, http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/ MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=29376387 3&mt=8 for the modest price is $4.99US, and is an upgrade of the iPhone application Blue Marble. Owners of the previous version qualify to receive the upgrade for free. (The name Blue Marble is a trademark of Blue Marble Geographics, www.bluemarblegeo.com.) For more information on the Terra application go tho their website http://pages.sbcglobal.net/ rowlandd/Terra/.

APM TELESCOPES APM Formalizes Commitment to the American Market In a move that is sure to be received with excitement by all American astronomy enthusiast who aspire to telescopes and components of the highest quality, Marcus Ludes, owner of APM Telescopes of Germany, has announced the launch of APM American, an online retail store based in New Jersey.

Building on its prior successes in utilizing partnerships to market and support APM products in North America, Ludes decided it was time to establish a fulltime presence in America.

With its new U.S. base, APM will be able to reduce shipping costs and time, while offering a greater level of service and wider inventory to its North American clientele.

High quality APM brand equipment, such as the world renowned APM/LZOS

refractors, will be available for purchase directly from APM America. In addition, APM America will also stock a range of items from manufacturers of other premium astronomy tools, such as those from Takahashi, AstroTech, TMB, Orion Optics UK, and TelescopeService of Germany.

APM Telescopes also anticipates the opening of a retail location in the not too distant future, where customers will be able to see these premium products on display.

Markus (shown in image) has appointed Christine Delaney as General Manager and Morris Bagnall as Sales Manager of the new company. Together they look forward to continuing to provide the quality of product and service that has long been expected of APM. For more information, please visit www.apmamerica.com.

SkyShed Observatories Owner/Designer Wayne Parker recently traveled to Afghanistan with his 1980s Canadian rock band, Glass Tiger, to meet with and entertain coalition troops. Wayne carried a PST solar scope everywhere he went and whenever possible set the scope up to show the sun to troops. The reaction from the troops was great, and it provided a few moments to take their minds off the war going on around them. Many service members were intrigued to see the desert sun for the first time through a scope.

Wayne says “We were honored and thankful for the privilege to spend time with frontline troops, and hopefully bring a little bit of home and a momentary repose to their lives, if only for a short time.”

The Toronto-based band, Glass Tiger, is one of Canada’s most successful rock groups and was invited to visit Afghanistan by the Canadian military as part of a “Team Canada” program that sees Canadian entertainers and former NHL hockey players provide a positive morale boost to the soldiers serving there.

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www.scopestuff.com 512-259-9778

Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

17

INDUSTRYNEWS

SOCIETY OF AMATEUR RADIO ASTRONOMERS Announces Student Grant Program

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Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

On March 30, 2009, President Tom Crowley of the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers (SARA) announced a student grant program for aspiring radio astronomers, saying, “The Board of Directors felt strongly that we need to encourage young people in the study of science and radio astronomy and the grant program was established to help students fund their projects.” He further explained, “We have set aside $1,000.00 this year for five students in grades 5 thru college. An application is posted at our web site www.radio-astronomy.org.”

Kerry Smith has been appointed the head of the program and says, “We have SARA mentors all over the country, and even outside the United States, ready to assist students with their projects. We are excited to see young people pursue an interest in radio astronomy.”

The grant applications will be reviewed by a committee consisting of Smith, Jim Brown and Bill Lord. Students awarded grants are invited to have their work published in the Society’s journal, Radio Astronomy, and even present their projects at the annual SARA conference held at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, West Virginia, in June.

Students have a variety of projects that could be studied from Stanford University’s program of Sudden Ionospheric Disturbances (SID), NASA’s Radio Jove studying Jupiter storms and solar storms, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center INSPIRE program studying natural and manmade radio waves, meteor detection and the Itty Bitty Telescope (IBT) from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), and from SARA. The Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers was founded in 1981 as a membership supported, nonprofit [501(c) (3)], educational and scientific corporation. As an international organization, members of all educations and backgrounds come together to study and share the excitement of radio astronomy, and membership is open to anyone with an interest in radio astronomy. For more information on SARA’s Student Grant Program, or on other SARA activities and resources, contact Melinda Lord at treasurer@radio-astronomy.org or visit their website at www.radio-astronomy.org.

INDUSTRYNEWS

FAINTFUZZIES.COM Alvin Huey Offers Free Downloadable Observing Guides Readers who have been fortunate enough to enjoy any of the three books of Alvin Huey’s “At the Eyepiece” observingguide series, will be especially pleased to learn that Alvin is now offering additional observing resources in free downloadable form.

Alvin applies the same writing and organization skills that made his Hickson Group Observer’s Guide and Abell Planetary Nebulae Observer’s Guide, both now in their second editions, and the more recent Observing the Arp Peculiar Galaxies, so very popular with observers who desire to go deeper than the typical Messiers, in producing the very seven very useful downloadable guides.

The new resources include: The Local Group (55 pages, 5.0 MB), Selected Small Galaxy Groups (60+ groups for 8inch or larger telescopes, 128 pages, 10.4

MB), Selected Galaxy Trios (115+ trios for 8-inch or larger telescopes, 134 pages, 8.8 MB), Selected Shakhbazian Galaxy Groups (60+ groups best viewed through 25-inch or larger telescopes, 76 pages, 4.1 MB), Abell Galaxy Clusters (80+ clusters for which Alvin recommends a 16-inch or larger telescope, 430 pages, 20.8 MB), Globular Clusters (90+ globulars best viewed with 8-inch or larger telescopes, 111 pages, 6.6 MB), and Planetary Nebulae (350+ objects, 313 pages, 25.3 MB).

Each entry receives a naked-eye finder chart, telescopic finder chart and, if applicable, a labeled negative DSS image – all organized for convenient use at the eyepiece. These downloadable observing guides are designed to be printed on both sides of the paper to maximize usefulness in the field, because they include two-page

spreads that are designed to be used together.

Alvin recommends that users coilbind the pages and encourages users to download the guides and take them to one of the many consumer oriented printing outlets, such as Kinkos, for printing and binding. For those who want to print the guides themselves and who do not have access to a duplex printer, Alvin recommends printing the odd pages in reverse order, then taking that printed stack and replacing it in the paper tray facing up with the top of the pages pointing away from the printer, then simply printing the even pages in reverse order.

For more information on Alvin Huey’s free downloadable observing guides, as well as on his excellent At the Eyepiece book series, please visit www.faintfuzzies.com.

Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

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INDUSTRYNEWS

SPRINGERWIEN NEW YORK Now Shipping Star Vistas by Greg Parker and Noel Carboni Regular readers will recall Greg Parker’s report in the October 2008 issue of ATT that chronicled his astrophotography experiences using a Celestron C11 equipped with Starizona’s HyperStar system. Parker’s previous, Making Beautiful Deep-Sky Images, a book that described in even greater depth Parker’s experiences with the HyperStar equipped C11, had been published as part of the Patrick Moore “Practical Astronomy” series.

When Parker concluded his article with the promise of a second book, one containing images from his HyperStar/C11 portfolio, we were anxious for its eventual release.

ATT is pleased to announce that the first printing of Star Vistas, published by Springer Wien New York, is now completed and that copies are available directly from Springer (www.springer.com), as well as from most major book sellers. The 158 page book presents 95 high-quality, full-page, true full-color images, that are made all the more remarkable by being captured using equipment that is within the financial and technical reach of most amateur astronomers and for displaying many deep-sky objects that are rarely targeted by the major space telescopes. The book boasts forwards by Sir Arthur C. Clarke,

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Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

Sir Patrick Moore, and Dr. Brian May, and is, as Greg Parker describes it, “…a large format coffee-table book. This is a ‘pretty picture’ book, pure and simple.”

Star Vistas is the latest achievement of the ongoing collaboration between Greg Parker and Noel Carboni. Parker, who by day is a Professor of Photonics at the University of Southampton U.K., researching Photonic Crystals, had become proficient with acquiring data using the HyperStar equipped Celestron C11, but felt he lacked the image-processing skill necessary to translate that raw data into works of art.

Fortunately, Noel Carboni, one of the most capable astro-image processors on the planet, noticed one of Parker’s less than optimally processed HyperStar images of M33 on an online forum and the collaboration was born.

Carboni has since applied his considerable astroimage processing skills to all of Parker’s HyperStar/C11 data and together they have created

an impressive portfolio, the best of which are gloriously reproduced in Star Vistas.

Fellow astrophotographers will be pleased to learn that they too can benefit from Noel Carboni’s considerable experience via his Astronomy Tools astro-image processing Photoshop action sets (http://actions.home.att.net/Astronomy_ Tools.html – $19.95US).

For more information on Star Vistas, visit www.starvistas.com.

INDUSTRYNEWS

IP4AP.COM Announces Photoshop Foundations Intermediate Part 2 IP4AP was created just over two years ago to share its founders’ image processing experience with astrophotographers of all skill levels. Its services were specifically based upon the very rational theory that, while there are many resources available to help dedicated astrophotographers refine their astroimage processing skills, most of these techniques are best taught visually – thus IP4AP tutorials are presented in a very effective video format.

The goal of the IP4AP tutorial series is to teach astrophotographic processing with Photoshop, not Photoshop per se, although those who also enjoy general photography will undoubtedly learn skills that are valuable to all disciplines of digital photography as well.

Each IP4AP installment is designed to provide the building blocks critical to astroimage processing proficiency as well as preparation for the next installment in the IP4AP series.

The solid foundation provided by IP4AP’s Photoshop Basics collection was built upon by IP4AP’s Photoshop Foundations Intermediate Part 1, and now Photoshop Intermediate Part 2 extends the depth of instruction so many dedicated astrophotograhers have already enjoyed in their quests for astrophotograph processing mastery. The backbone of Intermediate Part 2 is the processing system Warren Keller calls “The Five Ss.” “Stretching, Sharpening, Saturating, Smoothing, and Selecting” cover most

adjustments users will make to their data using the sophisticated tools of Photoshop.

Intermediate Part 2 consists of 18 individual segments that cover everything from methodology of Chrominance with modern Monochrome and One-Shot Color CCDs and DSLRs, to archiving completed images, and the concepts and techniques presented in all IP4AP series are applicable to all recent versions of Photoshop, including CS4, though each version’s workspace will look somewhat different.

IP4AP’s Photoshop Foundations Intermediate Part 2 was created with Camtasia and requires a Flash enabled browser. The format provides simple, intuitive control of each video segment and the production quality of Intermediate Part 2 proves that IP4AP’s authors have come very far since their earliest efforts.

You’ve invested hundreds of dollars in your copy of Photoshop, and thousands of dollars in astrogear, and it makes no sense not to invest just tens of dollars more to obtain the essential skills necessary to unlocking the full potential of Adobe’s remarkable image-processing tool.

IP4AP’s Photoshop Foundations Intermediate Part 2 is available in streaming form from www.ip4ap.com ($39.99US) and on DVDs exclusively from Adirondack Video Astronomy (www.astrovid.com), High Point Scientific (www.highpointscientific .com), and soon from Oceanside Photo & Telescope (www.optcorp.com).

Subscribe Now!!!

Print and Online Issues Now Available!

ASTRONOMY

TECHNOLOGY TODAY

www.astronomytechnologytoday.com

Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

21

INDUSTRYNEWS

NIGHT VISION ASTRONOMY New Company to Produce and Market BIPH We have reported in previous issues on involvement of Denkmeier Optical founder, Russ Lederman, in development of a revolutionary new product known as the Binocular Photon Machine, or BIPH. Lederman has now joined with Douglas Baum in forming Night Vision Astronomy to manufacture and market the production version of the new device. Night Vision Astronomy’s first production run sold out quickly as it filled preorders and a second run will begin soon to meet the considerable demand created by word-of-mouth reports of the performance of the new observing tool.

The BIPH (pronounced “biff ”) is designed to provide observers a cost-effective alternative to ever larger telescopes in their endless effort to collect more photons. Its Generation-3 Military Technology lightamplification device permits the observer to make far more efficient use of photons collected by small scopes – using both eyes! Its thin-filmed, hand-selected and quality-tested image intensifier multiplies the light signal up to 50,000 times, effectively tripling the aperture of any telescope. Better yet, the system’s unique design allows observers to use two eyes in any telescope, and in a format that naturally and comfortably accommodates any interpupillary separation – all in real time.

The format of the BIPH is exceedingly flexible, accommodating enhanced viewing

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Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

through a variety of optical devices.

Attach a camera lens and the BIPH becomes a hand-held, dualeye, ultra-widefield viewing device capable of showing billowing detail of favorite targets such as the Pelican and North American Nebulae, bifurcation in M27, and much more. With the BIPH, small telescopes, and even camera lenses, can be used visually to reveal structure that eludes detection in even the largest amateur telescopes sans BIPH. The image intensifier is completely selfcontained with an integral high-voltage power supply and equipped with automatic brightness control. The power supply is designed to ensure constant output image brightness as light levels increase and also provides bright-source protection to guard the tube against exposure to high levels of light.

The Gen-3 photocathode is very sensitive to low radiation levels and visible and, especially, near infrared light. It also provides very high signal-to-noise ratio for extended detection ranges at very low light levels. The 6-micron channel spacing in the image intensifier’s Micro-Channel Plate

(MCP) provides exceptional resolution and the MCP has a thin ion-barrier film that preserves photocathode sensitivity during operation, greatly extending the life of the Gen-3 tubes.

The primary difference between Generation-2 and Generation-3 tubes is the photocathode. The Gallium Arsenide composition of the Gen-3 image intensifier significantly increases photo-response, tube life, resolution, gain, and signal-to-noise ratio, making it ideal for astronomy.

Additionally, the MCP of the Gen-3 tube is coated with an ion-barrier film for increased tube life.

Every BIPH is shipped packaged in a high-quality Pelican Case with personalized laser-engraved case badge that identifies the owner, whether individual, university, or organization. Night Vision Astronomy also offers Barlows and focal reducers to compliment the BHIP, as well as a host of other accessories. For more information on this remarkable new product, please visit www.nightvisionastronomy.com.

INDUSTRYNEWS

THE GALILEOSCOPE A IYA 2009 Cornerstone Project The Galileoscope is a high-quality, low-cost telescope kit developed for the International Year of Astronomy (IYA) 2009 by a team of leading astronomers, optical engineers, and science educators.

No matter where the user lives, the easyto-assemble, 50-mm (2-inch) diameter, 25- to 50-power achromatic refractor, can reveal the celestial wonders that Galileo Galilei first glimpsed 400 years ago and that still delight stargazers today.

Potential targets include lunar craters and mountains, the four “Galilean” moons circling Jupiter, the phases of Venus, Saturn's rings, and countless stars invisible to the unaided eye It is no exaggeration to say that the telescope changed everything; Galileo's discoveries literally revolutionized our perception of the universe and Earth's place in it. Endorsed by the United Nations and UNESCO, IYA2009 celebrates astronomy's contributions to society and culture, helps "connect the dots" between science, technology and prosperity, and aims to stimulate worldwide interest, especially among young people, in science. Amateur and professional astronomers and science educators in more than 135 countries are organizing public events and activities around the theme “The Universe: Yours to Discover.” After all, anyone with a tele-

scope can see what Galileo saw.

But not everyone has a telescope, especially in less developed parts of the world. To enable more people in more places to personally experience the wonders of the universe, the Galileoscope project has developed a remarkably inexpensive, very-high-quality, and easy-to-use refractor. With the Galileoscope, children and adults can learn how telescopes work and repeat for themselves the spectacular observations made by Galileo beginning in 1609. Pictured are young Parisians testing the Galileoscope on a daylight target.

One of the organizers of the Galileoscope, Doug Arion, Professor of Physics with Carthage College, said of the project, “We want to get these into the hands of as many people as possible, worldwide. Our orders are already from many, many countries on all continents, and we have a donation program so individuals can purchase Galileoscopes that we will distribute this fall to those who can't afford to purchase one themselves.

With achromatic glass optics, and extremely well designed mechanics, it's a terrific telescope. We have worked very

hard to bring this project to fruition, and hope that everyone else will be as excited about it as we are!”

The Galileoscope comes as a kit with simple instructions for no-tools assembly in five minutes or less. Its achromatic optics include a 50-mm-diameter objective lens of 500-mm focal length, an eyepiece of 20-mm focal length (magnification 25x), and a 2x Barlow lens (yielding 50x when used with the supplied eyepiece). The Galileoscope accepts almost any optical accessory that has a standard 1.25-inch (31.75-mm) barrel, and it attaches to virtually every tripod made or distributed anywhere in the world (a tripod is, therefore, not included with the kit). You get all this for just $15US each, plus shipping, or $12.50US each, plus shipping, for orders of 100 or more.

Kits will begin shipping in late April 2009. For more information, visit www.galileoscope.org.

Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

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NEWPRODUCTS

VIXEN OPTICS Introduces a Trio of New Products Dual-Speed Focuser A new dual-speed focuser is now available as a standard feature on the Vixen ED81S, ED103S, ED115S, NA140SSf, as well as on the all new AX103, described below. The dualspeed focuser can also be installed on the Vixen VMC200L, VC200L and the R200SS. With the installation of the new Vixen Dual-Speed Focuser (by simply removing one of the focusing knobs), the rack-and-pinion focusing equipment on your existing Vixen Telescope is upgraded to provide finer focus adjustments.

The new Vixen Dual-Speed Focuser has a 7:1 micro focus ratio and is priced at $249US.

Dual-Speed Focuser

AX103S Quad Refractor

AX103S Quad Refractor Vixen’s all new AX103S f/8.0 refractor features a three-element objective lens, incorporating a central ED lens.

This reduces chromatic aberration and yields high-contrast images. The rear field-corrector lens helps to deliver sharp images to the edges of the field of view. “Precision Multi-Coating,” applied to the lenses, assures high light transmission and the new built-in dual-speed focuser (described above) enables coarse and fine focus adjustments. The all new Vixen AX103S is manufactured in Japan and measures 103 mm by 825 mm (4 inches by 32.4 inches). The introductory price is $2999US.

flexible handles to minimize vibrations and keep your view sharp – very useful in searching and tracking celestial objects.

The mount head is easily removed to allow for a switch to a heavier tripod. In addition, this is a great mount for terrestrial viewing. The mount’s gear drives make it a simple matter to precisely track any moving target, from a planet to a ship on the horizon, by turning the easy-to-reach elevation and/or azimuth control handles. The “World-Standard” dovetail attachment system used on the Porta II mount was developed by Vixen and allows the New Porta II mount to accept a variety of dovetailmounted optical tubes and binoculars.

Introductory pricing is $319US.

Porta II Mount Vixen Optics’ new Porta II is a solid alt-azimuth mount with a 20-pound payload capacity that features slow-motion

Porta II Mount

Our new WeatherSentry Weather Monitor is fully configurable at order, and answers the need for observatory weather safety. ASCOM compliant interface integrates seamlessly with ACP and ACP Web interfaces, and implements one-line file interface for non-ASCOM software integration. The base unit comes with Rain Sensor, Skylight Sensor, USB controller, cable and power adapter and is upgradable for your needs including Sky Temperature Sensor option, Ambient Temperature, Humidity and Dew Point option, and Wind Speed Sensor option. Configure WeatherSentry to your needs. Spend the rest on optics!

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Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

For more information on these new products from Vixen Optics, please visit www.vixenoptics.com.

NEWPRODUCTS

APOGEE INSTRUMENTS New High-Cooled Series D09F Camera Housing Apogee Instruments has announced an optional deeper, cooler housing, designated the D09F, that provides cooling to as low as 75C below ambient – without liquid circulation.

The new housing supports a wide variety of sensors, including large-area arrays like the Kodak KAF16803, as well as e2v back-illuminated devices such as the 2048 x 2048 CCD4240 (with quantum efficiency above 90 percent from 500 to 660 nm), the Fairchild CCD 3041, and Hamamatsu and e2v spectroscopic format back-illuminated devices such as the S10140-1109 (2048 x 512).

Like all Apogee cameras, the D09F uses a professional-grade shutter (the Melles

Griot 63 mm) with support electronics designed to extend shutter lifetime.

Windows are fused silica, and CCDs are baffled to virtually eliminate stray light from entering the inner chamber. Plus, an optional near-infrared pre-flash solves residual bulk imaging of some CCDs. Cameras built in the D09F housing support binning up to 8 horizontal by the height of the CCD, as well as subarray readout, programmable fan speeds, external triggering, and TDI readout. All Apogee cameras carry a two year warranty and a lifetime guarantee against condensation in the inner chamber.

For more information, including access to a very detailed, 28-page downloadable product brochure, please visit www.ccd.com.

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Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

NEWPRODUCTS

DEEPSKY CORPORATION Launches Deepsky Imaging for Video CCD Capture and Processing Deepsky Imaging is a new low-cost, easy-to-use image enhancement and video CCD capture software for the Windows platform. With this software, users can capture images from any video CCD camera outputting composite video or S-Video, such as the StellaCam, MallinCam, and various webcams. In addition, the new software provides many tools to enhance existing astronomical images and utilizes the excellent pre-processing engine from the popular freeware application, Deepsky Stacker. By incorporating this stacking engine, Deepsky Imaging simplifies the capture and pre-processing necessary to getting great final images.

One particularly nice feature of Deepsky Imaging is the ability to capture raw video and convert it to a TIFF image on the fly without the user having to manually perform this step.

Deepsky Imaging also allows a series of images to be taken automatically at a desired time interval.

Additional features of the new software include a live video preview window; video processing that lets the user adjust brightness, contrast, and more; easy focusing using full screen preview; manual “test” captures; automatic capture via sequencing; unique naming of captured images; set interval between captures; end a sequence after taking “X” number of captures; and session history lets user capture additional images later.

The software works with any Microsoft Direct Show capture devices and supports NTSC and PAL devices. Other features include color separation and merge tools; processing portions of an image (Region); TWAIN scanning support; full drag and drop; advanced screen capturing modes; sophisticated previewing and printing; and easy to use pan and magnify tools. Plus it offers automatic integration using Deepsky Stacker to align and stack automatically.

Deepsky Imaging supports more than 30

image formats, including GIF, JPG, FITS 8, 16, and 32 bits with header (read only), TIF, and BMP. Plus, more than 100 image processing and effects are available, including unsharp mask, video deinterlacing, removal of hot pixels, median binary filters, high-pass filter, background subtraction, brightness, contrast, intensity adjustments, spatial filters, and artistic enhancement features.

The software also features unique and powerful annotation support, a thumbnail image browser, undo capability, and a history bar that tracks changes. With this software, users can easily convert images from one format to another, adjust color depth of images, and create simple animations.

Deepsky Imaging is available in a 30-day trial version that contains 100 percent of the software’s features (i.e., no cripple ware). The fully licensed software is priced at $39.99US via download, or a CD ROM containing the Deepsky Imaging software plus other bonus programs can be purchased for $49.99US. For more information, visit www.deepskysoftware.net.

Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

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NEWPRODUCTS

SCOPESTUFF Offers Wireless Go-To Connection for LX200, Celestron and ServoCat Cut the cord! Now you can control your go-to telescope from your computer, wirelessly! ScopeStuff ’s Bluetooth wireless adapter is easy to install and creates a reliable link between your PC and go-to telescope.

No batteries are required for the wireless adapter; it derives power from your scope’s external power source of 11 to 18-volts DC and draws less than 100ma. The wireless adapter requires no additional drivers or PC software, and each adapter has a unique PIN number to eliminate chance of interference with and from others on the field.

Installation is simple: just plug the new adapter into your scope’s power and RS232 jacks, and plug your scope power supply into the adapter. ScopeStuff preconfigures the adapter for your scope type, so installation at the scope is a snap.

The power and data cables are 20 inches long, permitting the adapter to be mounted on a tripod leg, pier, scope base, etc. with supplied Velcro and cable clips.

The good old RS232 connectors on laptop computers are a thing of the past, but most new computers have internal Bluetooth wireless interfaces or are inexpensive and easy to upgrade to Bluetooth capability. ScopeStuff ’s wireless kits are based on Class 1 (up to 100 meter) Bluetooth, with an external rotatable antenna for long range and reliable

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Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

operation, and conform to all specifications for Bluetooth RS232 serial devices.

Configuring Bluetooth on your computer is fairly easy. If your computer doesn’t have Bluetooth built in, inexpensive USB adapters are widely available to add Bluetooth capability to your computer.

Your astronomy software must support COM ports greater than COM4, but that is now common on most packages.

Windows Bluetooth RS232 port assignments are normally from COM5 to COM15.

If your installation currently uses an RS232 cable to connect to your scope, ScopeStuff ’s cable replacement version is plug-and-play and will have your wireless connection up and running in minutes!

Cable replacement adds a computer-end Bluetooth dongle that connects to the D9 RS232 connector on your computer, instead of a long cable to the scope. The computer-end dongle is pre-configured to automatically connect to the scope-

end adapter.

ScopeStuff ’s Wireless Go-To Connection can be configured for Meade’s LX 200 ACF, GPS and Classic telescopes, as well as for Celestron Go-To telescopes and those equipped with ServoCat systems. The unit weighs just 6 ounces and measures 4.4 inch by 2.4 inch by 1.3 inch. The wireless scopeend kits are priced at $99US and the wireless cable replacement kits at $169US. For more information, visit www.scopestuff.com.

NEWPRODUCTS

KNIGHTWARE Releases SQM Reader Pro Knightware has announced the release of SQM Reader Pro, a Windows-based software program that allows users to read Unihedron’s SQM-LE either remotely or locally via Ethernet connection. The software works with Windows Vista (32 bit), XP and 2000. SQM Reader Pro joins SQM Reader and Deep-Sky Planner in Knightware’s product line-up.

SQM Reader Pro adds graphing, extended data storage, and transmission capabilities to the basic feature set of SQM Reader, making it perfect for use in local or remote observatories by imagers and visual observers alike.

Star party organizers can connect the meter to a wireless router on the observing field and allow wireless connection to computers within range. Any user can then receive readings from the meter wirelessly. Users conducting dark sky studies will also find time-averaging and expanded data storage features essential.

Key Features: (1) Displays darkness readings in magnitude per square arcsecond (MPSAS) and theoretical Naked Eye Limiting Magnitude (NELM). (2) On-demand or automatic continuous reading. (3) Continuous reading can be suspended during astronomical twilight and/or sun up at your meter (not necessarily at your computer). (4) Time-averaging of MPSAS and NELM are available. (5) Displays minimum, maximum, mean and standard deviation per sampling period for MPSAS and NELM. (6) Graph one of MPSAS, NELM, or a simple moving average of either value in real-time. (7) Stores reading data in comma separated value (CSV) text file. (8) Stores latest graphed data as a JPEG file. (9) Stores latest reading values as a JPEG file.

(10) Sends selected file(s) to a program, script, batch file or remote FTP server.

Knightware is located in central North

Carolina and specializes in creating software for astronomers. Its flagship product, DeepSky Planner, Observation Planning and Logging Software for Astronomers, has been in publication since 1994 and is in use worldwide.

SQM Reader Pro is available by digital delivery ($25US) or on CD ($32.95US) directly from Knightware at h t t p : / / w w w. k n i g h t w a r e . b i z / s q m / readerpro.htm

Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

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NEWPRODUCTS

APM TELESCOPES Introduces 2.5-inch Field Flattener for Apos On many fast refractors matched with larger CCD cameras, normal field flatteners reach the limit for field correction and illumination very quickly.

Although many modern apochromatic refractors now feature large focusers to accommodate ever larger CCD sensors without vignetting, there have been relatively few options for universal field flatteners of clear aperture larger than 2 inches. After months of testing and development, APM has addressed this state of affairs with the introduction of its new 2.5-inch, zero-power field flattener for f/5 to f/9 refractors.

Specifications and features include an open aperture of 62 mm to allow use of large-chip CCD cameras with fast f/5 refractors. The distance between the flattener and CCD sensor is 91.5 mm to accommodate use of imaging accessories

such as filter wheels and off-axis guiders. It flattens the image field without further reduction of image scale and features a M68 male thread and M63 female thread at the telescope side, and a M69 female thread at the camera side.

Of course, the new APM 2.5-inch Field Flattener requires a focuser that is large enough to accommodate it.

APM offers ready-to-use adapters for large focusers by Baader and Starlight Instruments, and is working on more. It also offers custom made adapters to match the user’s unique specifications.

APM’s new 2.5-inch Field Flattener

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is ready for market and available from stock. Introductory pricing is $370US. For more information, visit www.apmamerica.com, or www.apm-telescopes.com.

CCTS CAMERA CONCEPTS & TELESCOPE SOLUTIONS

www.cameraconcepts.com At CCTS, the owners, Jeff and Greta, take a hands-on approach to customer service. Call them direct at 631-335-1279

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• Complete line of Orion products Buy direct from us at reduced shipping charges!

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• CCTS Twist Pack Eyepiece Cases

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We travel coast to coast to over 20 star parties and events a year - check out our website for the schedule.

We’ll see you there! Or Visit us at 10 South Ocean Ave Patchogue, NY 11772 • 631-475-1118

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Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

Manfrotto Meade Nikon Optec Orion Pelican Pentax Peterson Engineering Rigel Systems SBIG Sirius Technologies Sky & Telescope Sky Engineering Software Bisque

Solarscope StarGPS Starlight Instruments Starry Night (Imaginova) Takahashi Tamrac Televue Telrad Thousand Oaks Optical Unihedron Vector William Optics

NEED WE SAY MORE?

Arcturus Optics A CCTS Exclusive!

NEWPRODUCTS

OPTEC Offers 3-Inch Corrector for Meade 16-Inch SCTs Optec’s newest 3-inch design is the first in its much anticipated series of 3-inch telecompressors. Dubbed the Next Generation Corrector (NGC 316), the new accessory was designed specifically for the classic Meade 16-inch Schmidt Cassegrain Telescopes (SCT). Its custom designed, well corrected optics compensate for the inherent aberrations of the original large SCT design, converting its typically f/10 focal ratio to a highly corrected f/7.5 optical system and bringing it very close to

the performance of Meade’s remarkable new 16-inch ACF telescopes.

Optec’s new four-element corrector provides plenty of back focus for filter wheels, off-axis guiders, or deep chip cameras, and can fully illuminate CCD cameras having chips up to 35 mm in diagonal and beyond.

Introductory pricing for the new Optec NGC 316 is $1,250US. For more information, please visit www.optecinc.com.

ORION TELESCOPES & BINOCULARS Two New Ritchey-Chretien Astrograph Telescopes Orion has thrown its hat into the affordable Ritchey-Chretien market with its 6- and 8-inch Ritchey-Chretien Astrograph telescopes. Orion has designed the 6-inch scope to be ideal for use with small-format CCD cameras, as well as DSLR cameras, and the 8-inch excels with both small CCD-chip cameras as well as large-format CCD and DSLR cameras for deep-sky and solar system astrophotography. The telescopes offer a wide, fully illuminated flat field which produces pinpoint star clarity all the way to the edge of the camera’s sensor.

Each model features a machined, dualspeed (10:1) Crayford-style focuser with an engraved millimeter scale on the drawtube.

One 2-inch and two 1-inch extension rings are included for adjusting the focus position for various cameras and the focus travel readily accommodates accessories including multiple filter wheels, as well as off-axis guiders.

Both telescopes feature secondary mirrors that are precisely center-marked to facilitate collimation. The 6-inch model offers a 19-inch enameled steel optical tube weighing only 12.3 lbs. and features a Vixen-style dovetail mounting bar underneath, for trouble-free setup on medium-sized equatorial mounts such as Orion’s Sirius EQ-

G. The 8-inch model’s 21-inch enameled steel optical tube weighs 15.8 lbs. and also features a Vixen-style dovetail mounting bar underneath, for trouble-free setup on medium or large-sized equatorial mounts such as Orion’s Atlas EQ-G. The inside of both optical tubes is fortified with eight computer-positioned light baffles, and the primary mirror baffle tube and secondary mirror light shield are also highly baffled to ensure maximum image contrast.

The Orion 6-inch Ritchey-Chretien Astrograph is offered at $779.95US and the 8-inch Ritchey-Chretien Astrograph is $1,195.95US. For more information go to www.oriontelescopes.com.

Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

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NEWPRODUCTS

ORION TELESCOPES & BINOCULARS More New Products for Spring-Summer 2009 Orion SteadyPix Deluxe Camera Mount Orion’s new SteadyPix Deluxe has been improved to fit all 1.25-inch eyepieces and most 2-inch eyepieces (up to 61mm in diameter). It also features a sturdier all-metal design for increased rigidity and performance. So if you’ve got the desire to dabble in astro-imaging, the SteadyPix Deluxe Camera Mount is a great way to get started!

The SteadyPix Deluxe securely couples any digital camera or DSLR to a telescope eyepiece, at just the right distance to achieve precise focus and centering for afocal photography. The rubber-lined eyepiece clamp helps prevent any marring or damage to your optics. This versatile mount offers three dimensions of adjustment (horizontal, vertical, and depth) to accommodate any camera size or lens position. You can even rotate the camera away from the eyepiece for visual access, without having to remove the SteadyPix mount.

The new SteadyPix Deluxe weighs just 10 ounces and is priced at $44.95US. Orion LRGB Filter Sets Orions new Luminance (w/IR cutoff), Red, Green, and Blue (LRGB) filters will help you take your astro-imaging to the next level.

The filter set is now available in either 1.25-inch or 2-inch versions for a variety of imaging systems, including larger format CCDs. They are designed for creating high-quality composite color astrophotos with monochrome imaging cameras. Combining separate images taken

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Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

through these four filters with a monochrome CCD provides a higher-resolution final image with better color rendition than an image from a

comparably sized color CCD. Orion’s LRGB sets feature dichroic glass filters designed for maximum light transmission. The color filters have an IR blocking coating, and all filters are parfocal to eliminate the need for refocusing between exposure sets. The anodized aluminum filter cells thread into Orion’s 1.25-inch or 2-inch multiple-filter wheels for convenient filter selection. A foam-lined filter case is included. Price: $205.95US (1.25-inch) and $349.95 (2-inch).

MegaView Ultra-Wide Field (82°) Eyepieces Orion’s MegaView eyepieces represent a high-quality, yet affordable solution for pristine 82-degree apparent field-of-views. Each eyepiece in the MegaView line features fully multi-coated optics to deliver crisp, clear images. The 1.25inch 4-mm, 7-mm and 16-mm eyepieces provide eye relief of 12mm, while the 2-inch 28-

mm eyepiece yields a generous relief of 18 mm.

The excellent performance of these deluxe widefield eyepieces is punctuated by their high-quality design and attractive appearance: gloss-black machined aluminum construction, with rubber knurled grip rings.

All MegaView Eyepieces are threaded for use with Orion filters and feature smooth twistup rubber eyeguards for viewing comfort. The 4.mm, 7-mm and 16-mm MegaViews weigh 7.2, 7.4 and 8.2 ounces respectively, and all three feature eye relief of 12mm. The 2-inch 28-mm MegaView weighs 2 pounds, 1.4 ounces and offers eye relief of 18mm. Prices range from $197.95 to $397.95US. New Scope Cloaks Orion offers new Scope Cloaks that fit mounted reflectors up to 10 inches and refractors up to 120 mm (4.7 inches) and up to f/8.3 (Model 15206) and 12-inch to 16-inch Dobsonians (Model 15207).

Orion's Scope Cloak is made of a high-tech tear-resistant and water-resistant material that keeps your optics free of dew. The highly reflective exterior surface also rejects solar radiation, keeping your telescope cool when left in sunlight and reduces “cooldown time” after nightfall. The Scope Cloak Telescope Cover prevents dust form contaminating telescope optical surfaces, reducing the need to perform delicate and tedious cleaning procedures and a handy locking drawstring provides a snug fit once installed on your telescope. A handy nylon carry pouch is included. Price $109.95US (Model 15206) and $119.95 (Model 15207).

NEWPRODUCTS Orion 20-mm Illuminated Centering Eyepiece The new Orion Illuminated Centering Eyepiece (ICE) offers a relatively long 20-mm focal length and a wide 70-degree apparent fieldof-view, making it easier to locate desirable targets for alignment or guiding. This virtually eliminates the need for swapping out high-power illuminated reticles with lower power eyepieces, in order to accurately center objects.

The ICE is fully multi-coated (all air-toglass surfaces) with anti-reflection coatings for bright, crisp views. It features a generous 16-mm eye relief and the barrel is threaded for Orion 1.25-inch filters. The illuminator switch doubles

as a “dimmer,” allowing you to adjust cross-hair brightness to the desired level.

The illuminator is powered by two LR44 batteries (included) and weighs just 8 ounces.

Price: $99.95US. Self-Contained Solitaire AutoGuider Orion’s new StarShoot Solitaire AutoGuider is a complete autoguiding system.

Autoguiding is vital for obtaining clear and crisp long-exposure astrophotos with pinpoint star resolution and laptop computers have long been a required component for autoguider control, but can be a real inconvenience in the field.

Orion’s innovative new stand-alone autoguiding camera provides a streamlined solution – a laptop or PC is no longer required for autoguider control. The StarShoot Solitaire AutoGuider includes a control box and all the necessary cabling to begin autoguiding right out of the box. The control interface is intuitive and usercentric, allowing anyone to masterfully operate the autoguider right away. Simply connect the Solitaire to the control box and mount, plug into a power source, and start autoguiding!

The StarShoot Solitaire is ideal for DSLR users who don't necessarily need a computer to control their imaging system, providing the convenience of automated guiding without the added cost of the computer hardware tradition-

ally associated with autoguiding, not to mention the added demand on in-field energy supplies needed to power that computer system. This convenient alternative also significantly lessens the chance for computer crashes or other imaging system malfunctions. Plus, the Solitaire AutoGuider makes it far easier for beginners to enjoy astrophotography. The builtin logic behind the control pad allows users to guide with pushbutton ease via its control pad.

Its sensor is powered by a 1/3-inch format Aptina MT9V032 CMOS chip, with a 752x480 pixel layout and 6 micron x 6 micron pixel size for high sensitivity and accurate autoguiding. As such, the Solitaire can be used with smaller, less expensive guide scopes. The autoguider camera also features a machined aluminum design with a black anodized finish, and weighs just 3.8 ounces. Its red LCD screen displays real-time guide star location on the chip, star focus quality, and a tracking graph during guiding, and features backlit buttons and adjustable brightness.

The StarShoot Solitaire AutoGuider automatically calibrates itself and detects guide stars, adjusting the exposure accordingly. It works with all equatorial mounts equipped with ST-4 compatible autoguide ports, including Orion’s SkyView Pro GoTo, Sirius EQ-G, and Atlas EQG mounts. The total package includes the autoguider camera, control box, 6-mm parfocal eyepiece for easy guide star acquisition and focus, 7foot camera cable (to control box), 7-foot autoguide cable (to mount), 10-foot power cable, and hard, foam-lined carrying case. The standalone autoguider is price at $599.95US.

StarShoot Pro V2.0 Deep-Space Imaging Camera Orion’s enhanced StarShoot Pro V2.0 offers affordable cooled, multi-megapixel color imaging. Its Sony 6.1-megapixel color CCD chip boasts a 3032 x 2016 pixel array in a 25.10-mm by 17.64-mm format. The StarShoot Pro’s square 7.8 micron pixel size provides an excellent balance between high resolution and sensitivity.

With some cameras in cooler weather conditions, condensation can form on the surface of the optical window due to the temperature of the optical window being affected by the cooled CCD. Orion’s enhanced design prevents this by increasing distance between the CCD chip and the optical window. You get detail-rich shots with enough resolution to make large format color prints.

The StarShoot Pro V2.0 is thermoelectrically cooled to dramatically reduce thermal noise and a small fan on the back enhances cooling efficiency even more. The Pro V2.0 allows the thermoelectric cooling to be shut off manually via software control to better eliminate dewing in extreme outdoor conditions.

The new software control also enables fan speed regulation. The StarShoot Pro’s 16-bit dynamic range gives it a leg-up on most DSLR cameras, which offer 10- to 14-bit A/D conversion.

Made in Canada, the StarShoot Pro V2.0 also features 2x2 binning and high-speed USB 2.0 connectivity for speedy image downloading. Maxim DL Essentials software is included for total control of focusing, image capture, and image processing.

Power is supplied via a single 12-volt DC cigarette lighter plug on a 10 foot cable and all of this comes neatly packed in a custom hard carrying case.

Introductory price for the new Orion StarShoot Pro V2.0 is $1,399.95US. For more information on these new products from Orion Telescopes & Binoculars, visit www.oriontelescopes.com.

Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

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NEWPRODUCTS

CATSEYE COLLIMATION Next Generation Infinity XLK Autocollimator With the addition of a second “offset” viewing pupil, the new Catseye INFINITY XLK autocollimator provides an additional perspective of the multiple “ghost” images revealing new visual cues that facilitate improved resolution of axial alignment errors.

The development of this innovative new tool represents a major leap in the technology of the autocollimator and is the direct result of out-of-the-box thinking and analysis by Ghassan “Jason” Khadder shared on the popular online astronomy forum, CloudyNights.com. Indeed, the “K” appendix to this new member of the XL line is in tribute to Jason’s extraordinary insight and assistance in facilitating the

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Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

conversion of his theories to reality in the form of the new XLK. The new XLK offers all of the features of the classic Catseye XL model, plus a second eyepiece pupil that produces additional visual feedback regarding the relative positions of the focuser and primary axis. The view provided by the second offset pupil is capable of revealing any incremental residual alignment errors that may remain despite indication through the conventional central pupil that all is in alignment.

The new Catseye Infinity XLK autocollimator is priced at $129US. For more information, including access to a downloadable high-resolution pamphlet detailing the design theory and operation

of the XLK, please visit www.catseyecollimation.com.

NEWPRODUCTS

DENKMEIER OPTICAL Introduces New Systems for Lunt 60-mm Solar Scopes For the better part of a full Solar Cycle, Denkmeier Optical has been coming up with innovative solutions that allow Ha solar telescopes to reach focus with its Denk Binoviewers and the end results produced the beautifully detailed views that can only be enjoyed by both eyes. Using both eyes helps the observer better appreciate the amazing Sun, and also improves the versatility of the solar telescope systems made by various companies.

Denkmeier Optical has now introduced a Denk Binoviewer system that will operate with the Lunt Solar Systems LS60 solar telescopes at three magnification ranges. Denkmeier’s Power x Switch Binoviewer System for the LS60 will operate at a very useful solar viewing range of 1.2X, 1.7X and 2.3X with an investment in but a single pair of eye-

pieces.

The Power x Switching Binoviewer System that Denkmeier Optical has designed to operate with The Lunt Solar Systems LS60 is available in both the Denk Standard Version at $749US and Denkmeier Optical’s best Premium Denk II Version at $1295US. For more information, please visit www.denkmeier.com.

QHYCCD Introduces QHY8 Pro 6.0 MP One-Shot Color CCD QHYDDC, Inc. broke new ground with the remarkable value of its QHY8 6.0 MP One-Shot Color CCD with APS sized sensor. Its new QHY8 Pro version improves on the standard QHY8 design by enhancing its thermal cooling capacity and including an autoguider port to facilitate using the camera as a guider. But the biggest news for the growing ranks of HyperStar users is that the casing of the QHY8 has been revamped into a very HyperStar-friendly profile that in turn reduces the overall obstruction when used for HyperStar imaging.

The 3032 by 2016 active pixel sensor is populated with 7.8um by 7.8um

square pixels in an effective sensor area that measures 28.4 mm diagonally.

Readout noise is measured at 812e @ 600 Kpixel/s, with QE of 60 percent at green (peak) and 50 percent at blue and H-alpha. The sensor features microlensing on the chip, progressive scan, ABG of -110dB, 16 bit ADC with CDS and preamp, a USB2.0 highspeed interface, and T-thread mounting.

Dimensions are very compact 2.5 inches diameter by 4.25 inch length.

The QHY8 Pro ships with drivers for Maxim DL, and is compatible with AstroArt, CCDSoft and Nebulosity. For more information on HyperStar applications of the new QHY8 Pro, please visit www.starizona.com.

Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

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NEWPRODUCTS

TELE VUE OPTICS Ethos Line Grows to Five At NEAF 2009, Tele Vue Optics demonstrated its newest 100degree apparent-field-of-view (AFOV) eyepiece: the 10-mm Ethos. Limited quantities of this latest addition to the Ethos line are available through Tele Vue dealers now.

The 10-mm Ethos delivers: 100° AFOV (50 percent larger in area than the field delivered by Tele Vue’s 82° Naglers), comfortable eye-relief, compatibility with Tele Vue DIOPTRX eyesight astigmatism correctors, the highest levels of distortion correction, plus highcontrast and on-axis sharpness for planetary viewing.

The new 10-mm Ethos is the “do-itall” eyepiece, perfect for all scopes (especially 8-inch SCTs) that can utilize this focal length. And, “filling the hole” between the existing13-mm and 8-mm

Ethos eyepieces makes it the ideal centerpiece for a 17mm/10-mm/6-mm Ethos set.

An important benefit of the combination of ultra-large AFOV and shorter focal length is that, for a given field in the sky, higher magnification results in a darker sky background – fainter stars become visible and more detail is seen on all deep-sky objects. The new Ethos provides another big magnification/contrast jump, yielding dramatic views simply not previously possible in any telescope. With the smaller exit pupil, eyesight limitations are also reduced.

In addition to matching all the

key performance criteria of its 13-mm sibling, the new 10-mm Ethos’ lighter weight and smaller diameter makes it more suitable for use with a binocular viewer.

The 10-mm Ethos’ effective field stop diameter is 17.7 mm and eye relief measures a very comfortable 15 mm. It shares the same 2-inch/1.25-inch barrel design of the 13-mm Ethos and the maximum diameter of the blackanodized housing is 61 mm.

The new eyepiece weighs 17.7 ounces.

For more information, visit www.televue.com.

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NEWPRODUCTS

SKYHOUND Introduces SkyTools 3 and SkyTools 3 Pro Edition SkyTools 3, Skyhound’s latest version of its popular observing software, provides a comprehensive suite of tools for planning, charting and logging observation, while the SkyTools 3 Pro Edition adds unique and powerful tools for imaging and an unprecedented database of stars to 20th magnitude for the entire sky.

SkyTools 3 incorporates an innovative visual detection model that draws on scientific models of sky brightness, atmospheric conditions, and detection contrast to predict the difficulty of detecting a specific object, categorizing potential objects from “obvious” to “very challenging” based upon telescope and observing conditions. It also features a double-star pair split model that predicts which pairs can be split visually, factoring atmosphere, optics, separation and magnitude difference. Double-star pairs are categorized in terms of “splittability” for a given instrument, from “obvious” to “very challenging split.”

The program also boasts science-based realistic sky simulation that is not only pretty,

including beautiful vistas of the Milky Way, but that also depicts objects accurately. The new sky-brightness, atmospheric, and visual detection models do a remarkable job of

selecting potential objects based upon what you can expect to see through the eyepiece, helping the user select challenging objects. A context viewer allows the user to drag the eyepiece field of view anywhere on the chart to see a simulation of that area – and if a telescope is connected via the Real Time add-on, the telescope will follow!

Other features include a nightly observing list generator, observing synopses that are auto-generated for any object, beautifully simulated planets and the current SOHO solar

image (see today’s sunspots!), improved object requestor, largest vetted double-star database, more accurate stellar, galaxy and nebula databases, data sync between computers, more log export options, Great Red Spot events, integrated supplemental database editor, effortless download of minor planet data, and much more.

The Pro Edition features a much larger stellar database (to 20th magnitude), and adds a unique imaging session planner that helps the imager determine optimum imaging targets for given night, time, equipment, etc. with exposure calculator, imaging context viewer, GPS location tool, more powerful database searches, as well as the Real Time tool.

The standard version of SkyTools 3 is priced at $99.95US, and addition of the Real Time add-on bundle to the SkyTools 3 standard brings the total package to $124.90US. SkyTools 3 Pro Edition, which includes the Real Time add-on, is priced at $179.95US. For more information, please visit www.skyhound.com.

FOSTER SYSTEMS New AMC-101 WeatherSentry Weather Monitor After more than a year of development and testing, Foster Systems has introduced its new WeatherSentry Weather Monitor.

Being fully configurable at order, the new monitor answers the need for basic observatory weather safety. Its ASCOM compliant interface integrates seamlessly with ACP and ACP Web interfaces, and a “weather unsafe” alert is available to other compliant software. The new weather monitor also implements a one-line file interface for non-ASCOM software integration.

The base unit comes with a rain sensor, skylight sensor, USB controller, cable, and a power adapter. Users can add a sky temper-

ature sensor option to measure thickness of cloud cover and moisture in the upper air mass, and an ambient temperature, humidity, and dew-point option to sense dewing conditions. There is even a wind speed sensor option to complete the user’s observatory weather station.

Foster Systems serves astronomers and observatories worldwide, providing comprehensive remote observatory master control and integration solutions. For more information on the new WeatherSentry Weather Monitor, as well as all other Foster Systems products, please visit www.fostersystems.com.

Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

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Getting Started In Astrophotography With DSLR Cameras It’s Easier Than You Might Think!

By John Moody

Astro-imaging is definitely a hot topic in amateur astronomy these days – everyone enjoys the beautiful images and the camera’s ability to reveal far more color and detail than the human eye can see allows us to enjoy and study structure that we cannot observe otherwise.

Astro-images are therefore interesting and scientifically useful.

The astro-images we produce ourselves are a fun way to share with family and friends and also great to use in outreach activities as everyone is immediately drawn to astrophotos, especially kids. Plus, you’ll have the coolest computer wallpaper and screensavers! Anybody can have a picture of their kids, grandkids, pets, and such, but how many can display an astro-masterpiece that they created themselves? Best of all, with relatively inexpensive equipment, you’ll produce images that rival those taken by pros using the best, most expensive equipment not so very long ago – it’s a great ego boost.

One of the easiest ways to get started in astrophotography is with a DSLR. These increasingly popular and affordable cameras offer several advantages, not the least of which is that they can also be used for conventional photography. This can help to justify the expense and, if you decide you don’t enjoy astrophotography as much as you thought, you will still have a great camera for conventional photos. Plus, if

Image 1

you decide to sell it, the market is larger than that for used astro equipment.

Second, DSLRs can be used with a wide variety of lenses as well as telescopes and, since they use the same attachment methods as film SLR cameras have used for years, any required adapters/attachments/accessories tend to be fairly easy to find and somewhat reasonably priced.

Third, although they may cost more than lower-end dedicated astro-cameras, DSLRs

(generally) have much larger sensors resulting in a wider field of view and more forgiving image scale. Additionally, depending on models, DSLRs are generally cheaper than dedicated astro-cams with similar chip sizes. Another advantage is that imaging can be performed with DSLRs using a minimum of equipment (no laptop, filter wheels, external power source, etc.), which can be very convenient if you are traveling to dark skies to do your imaging.

Perhaps the biggest advantage though of

Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

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GETTING STARTED IN ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY WITH DSLR CAMERAS

Image 2

DSLRs is their flexibility – you can take a handheld photo of a spectacular sunset, tripod mounted star trails, all-sky shots with a fisheye lens, piggy-back mounted Milky Way panoramas, constellation photos and prime focus shots of deep-sky objects. Finally, since many of us have had some exposure to cameras and conventional photography, DSLRs are familiar tools and may therefore seem less challenging than dedicated astro-cameras.

But DSLRs present disadvantages too.

They are generally not to be as sensitive as dedicated astro-cameras and tend to have higher “noise” levels, an aspect that is exaggerated by the inability to control the temperature of DSLR sensors. Images produced with DSLRs must therefore be calibrated with “dark frames” taken at a temperature as close as possible to that at which the image data was captured. Due to these sensitivity and noise issues, processing DSLR images may be more challenging than processing those taken with a dedicated astrocam. Some DSLRs may also fail to function properly at extremely low temperatures. Also, when not using an AC adapter, it may be necessary to change batteries one or more times during an imaging session. However, in spite of these disadvantages, I feel that imaging with a DSLR is still a great way to get started in astrophotography.

40 Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

Starting with Fixed-Tripod Images DSLR astrophotography can at first seem daunting, especially once you start reading, researching and dealing with all of the jargon – guiding, polar alignment, image scale, calibration, lights, darks, flats, bias, histograms, stretching, layer masking, de-convolution, field rotation, and other terminology peculiar to the art can make astrophotography, DSLR or otherwise, seem confusing. In reality though, you needn’t know and understand all of this minutia before you can begin taking pictures. Perhaps the simplest way to get started in DSLR astrophotography is by taking some very simple “point and shoot” images of the moon, twilight scenes, planetary conjunctions, and constellations with a setup as simple as the camera mounted on a photo tripod. In fact, this is a great way to learn about the camera and its settings.

I usually shoot such “stationary” photos at an ISO setting of about 800 with a fairly short lens (50 mm or less) at the lowest focal ratio with which the lens is capable of producing decent results in “no flash,” “night,” or a similar mode.

When you are shooting the moon, planets or bright stars (Sirius, Vega, etc) you can often even get autofocus to work, although you may have to get the planet/star/et cetera exactly in one of the Auto Focus (AF) points. If after reviewing some shots on the camera’s LCD display I find

that I don’t like the results, I will switch the camera to manual mode and experiment with different exposure lengths until I get results that look good to me. The biggest limitation to this type of photography is that you’re relegated to relatively short exposures before star images start to trail.

As long as you are not viewing the photo at full resolution or printing it at an enlarged size, short trails may not become objectionable. Just how long you can expose without noticeable trailing depends primarily on the focal length you are using.

To make wide-angle, stationary images more interesting it helps to include familiar foreground references such as trees, an old barn or building, mountains, or even clouds.

Also, shooting fairly low on the western horizon just after sunset or the eastern just before sunrise can add some color and light to make the resulting image even more pleasing. See Image 1 for an example of a thin crescent moon with earthshine that I took as a single image in “Flash Off” mode with a Canon 300D mounted on a simple photo tripod.

Capturing Star Trails You can also produce star-trail images with the same simple camera and stationary tripod set up. The best of these tend to be centered near the celestial pole (Polaris in the Northern Hemisphere) and, just as with stationary photos, interesting foregrounds can really make these images stand out. Star trails are as simple as taking many images over a relatively long time with a very short interval in between, then stacking them. In this case you are actually taking advantage of the normal trailing you get when using a fixed mount. See Image 2 (the horizontal red streak is an airplane) for an example created from 49 frames each 2-minutes long using the free software, Startrails, available at www.startrails.de.

Shooting multiple short exposures rather than a single long exposure offers the advantage of retaining the relative darkness of the background sky. Startrails simplifies stacking and processing of a final image. It also facilitates creation of time-lapse movies as AVI files. In fact, this feature can be used for creation of time-lapse movies of any subject, not just of star motion.

GETTING STARTED IN ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY WITH DSLR CAMERAS Piggybacking the DSL Another fairly simple way to get some nice astro-images and the logical next step after mastering fixed-tripod images and star trails is to either “piggyback” your camera on a driven equatorially (EQ) mounted scope (see Image 3), or to simply place the camera on the mount instead of the scope. See Image 4 for an example of an image of Orion taken with a Canon DSLR and 50-mm lens piggybacked on an EQ mounted Orion 8-inch Newtonian. If you use fairly short lenses (50 mm or so) even a relatively inexpensive mount will provide decent results (long focal lengths require mounts of relatively high accuracy for best results). Some extremely nice images of interesting areas of the Milky Way and large Nebulae can be produced this way.

Shooting Longer Exposures – An Overview Once you start using a driven mount however, you will almost certainly want to take longer and longer exposures to capture ever dimmer objects, and doing so will require taking multiple sub-exposures and calibrating and

Image 3

stacking them to achieve decent results. “Calibrating” simply refers to taking some additional exposures such as “dark,” “bias,” and “flat” frames and applying them to your sub-exposures using software such as Deep Sky Stacker, Images

Plus, IRIS, Nebulosity, or other similar programs to correct for issues such as vignetting, spots produced by dust on the camera sensor, and to remove sensor “noise,” all to make the final image look more pleasing. In my experience, the min-

Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

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GETTING STARTED IN ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY WITH DSLR CAMERAS

Image 4

imum calibration necessary to obtaining decent results is dark-frame subtraction. I won’t deal specifically with the fine points of calibration and stacking here other than to note that you must shoot images in “RAW” or “sensor” mode to facilitate calibration and that you need to calibrate individual sub-frames with dark frames,

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and sometimes also flat frames, in order to achieve an optimum final image. We will cover the finer details of stacking, calibration and postacquisition processing in later installments of this series.

Once you have a stack of calibrated frames you’ll need to perform some very basic post

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image-acquisition processing and there are a number of specialty software programs that assist with this “digital development” of the image.

Many of these image processing programs can automate both the calibration and digital development processes – clearly an advantage for those just starting out in astro-imaging. I recommend using software that can automate as much of the process as possible as it will make it easier to quickly get some acceptable results and allows concentration on other aspects of imaging. The astro-imaging learning curve is steep enough as is – there are enough skills to master that there is simply no need to make things any harder than necessary. Besides, it is easier to remain motivated (not to mention more fun!) if you can get some decent pictures quickly. As you develop the desire for ever greater image perfection and want to target ever more difficult targets, you will encounter frustration aplenty, so don’t needlessly add any when you are getting started. Just have some fun!

When you master basic dark frame calibration and stacking you can begin working on more advanced techniques such as adding flats,

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GETTING STARTED IN ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY WITH DSLR CAMERAS darks and bias frames to your calibration stack and on more advanced processing techniques such as layer masking.

Prime-Focus Astrophotography As I’ve already said, once you have taken some pictures using some of the simpler techniques and are comfortable with camera settings and the basics of calibrating and stacking images, you will undoubtedly want to graduate to long-exposure prime-focus photography through a telescope to capture faint objects. At this point it is possible to spend nearly unlimited sums of money and the equipment choices can become overwhelming, but by keeping in mind a few basic but important facts it is possible to choose a combination of equipment that will allow you to produce nice images at a reasonable cost. The things to remember when trying to decide what equipment you will need for prime focus astrophotography are: 1) The most important part of your astrophotography gear is the mount.

2) Increasing focal length generally equates to increasing difficulty, frustration and need for a mount of greater capacity.

3) Even the most capable mounts cannot track perfectly for unlimited periods of time.

4) Fast focal ratios (lower “f” numbers) allow shorter exposure times.

5) A good focuser is very important, as it has to support the weight of a camera, adapter, etc., while allowing the astrophotographer to find and hold critical focus.

Given these considerations, many find that the ideal starter system consists of a relatively small, short focal length scope on the biggest, best EQ mount you can afford, preferably one that can accept autoguider input. This would consist of anything from a 60- to 80-mm Apochromatic refractor between f/6 and f/7.5 to a 6to 8-inch f/5 Newtonian on a mount such as the Celestron CG-5, Meade LXD75, Orion SkyView Pro, or the SkyWatcher EQ5 Pro, mounts that are capable of handling 20 pounds and more of telescope, DSLR and related imaging gear. Better yet would be mounts of the 30 pound plus payload class of Orion’s Sirius/HEQ5 and Atlas/EQ6 mount, or Celestron’s new CGEM. If you need to cut cost, do it on the scope, not the mount. This may

Image 5

seem counterintuitive, but even the best undermounted optics in the world won’t produce as pleasing results as capably mounted modest optics. Plus, you can always upgrade to a better scope later and then relegate your “starter” scope

to guide-scope status.

When choosing a scope for astrophotography you will need to pay special attention to things you might not consider significant to visual use. For example, a focuser that is capable of

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GETTING STARTED IN ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY WITH DSLR CAMERAS carrying the heaviest 1.25-inch eyepieces may not fare as well under the much greater load of a DSLR – the focuser of your imaging scope must be capable of supporting the DSLR without slipping. You may also find that a motordriven focuser, a feature many would consider overkill for visual work, is very handy for astrophotography. The scope should have at least a two-inch focuser to prevent vignetting of the light received by the relatively large sensors of popular DSLRs. As mentioned above, you will want a scope with a relatively fast focal ratio to allow shorter exposures, which becomes increasingly important with less capable mounts. Unfortunately, faster scopes are more likely to suffer from various optical aberrations and well-corrected “fast” scopes tend to be relatively expensive. Fortunately, you can keep the cost down and still get a high-quality scope by investing in an instrument of small to modest aperture.

If you choose a Newtonian instead of a refractor, you will want to be sure that the secondary mirror is large enough to fully illuminate the relatively large sensor of your camera, which

is one reason I recommend an aperture of at least 6 inches – anything smaller is unlikely to have a large enough secondary mirror to fully illuminate a DSLR sensor. At some point you will want a coma corrector such as the Tele Vue Parracorr so stars nearest the edges of the image field, and especially in the corners, look nice and round rather than like little comets with short, broad tails. Until you invest in a coma corrector, you can simply crop the edges of your images to remove the most obvious evidence of coma, or display the image as a smaller size.

If you decide you prefer a refractor, you should consider investing in an Apo – anything less will produce undesirable false color fringes around brighter stars – and at some point you should consider a field flattener/focal reducer to obtain even illumination across the entire fields of your images and to provide a slightly larger field of view. But again, as with the Newtonian option, you can crop or otherwise display your images in ways that minimize or mask such imperfections. Fortunately, today’s market offers an embarrassment of riches in high-quality, competitively-priced small refractors that are won-

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www.deepskyinstruments.com 44 Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

derful astro-imaging tools as well as great visual instruments.

No matter what scope you use you will need an adapter system that permits mounting the camera directly to the 2-inch (or larger) focuser.

The most common method of attachment is a 2inch to T-thread prime focus camera adapter (see Image 5) mated to a T-ring that fits your camera.

This is basically a two-inch eyepiece barrel with T-thread on one end. There are lots to choose from, but it is a good idea to choose one that has the lowest possible profile since a common issue (especially with Newtonians) is insufficient infocus travel to allow a DSLR to reach focus.

Scopestuff now offers adapters that combine the T-ring and two-inch adapter. Indeed, it’s new “True 2-inch Barrel to Canon EOS Adapter” combines a very low profile with a large unobstructed opening to minimize vignetting of even the largest DSLR sensors, and Orion offers a “2-inch Zero-Profile Prime Focus Camera Adapter” that attaches to any T-ring equipped DSLR. When you are ready to start imaging through a telescope you will need to master the skill of Polar Alignment of the mount. While the topic is beyond the scope of this article, there are plenty of readily available Internet references with very good instructions on how to perform this procedure. I will simply refer you to the instructions that likely came with your equatorial mount or Internet sites such as http://www.petesastrophotography.com. Suffice to say that accurate polar alignment is necessary to obtaining acceptable long-exposure images.

There is a common misconception that guiding/autoguiding can substitute for accurate polar alignment, but this is, sadly, not true.

While it is true that you can obtain acceptable images with a less-than-perfect polar alignment, the better the polar alignment the better the images. Once you have learned to polar align your mount you can begin taking photographs like Image 6.

Regardless of the quality of the mount and focal length of the scope, you will find that there is a limit to the length of time you can expose an image before you get trailing or other undesirable mount related issues. You can often extend these exposure limits by improving the performance of your mount by performing

GETTING STARTED IN ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY WITH DSLR CAMERAS

Image 6

such procedures as re-lubing it, polishing/lapping gears and other moving parts that are in contact with each other, adjusting clearances, and so on. Since the exact procedures are mount dependant, I cannot provide details here, but, again, there are lots of related resources on the Internet. A good place to start for advice on “tuning” your mount for astrophotography would be the “Mounts” forum on Cloudy Nights (http://www.cloudynights.com).

In addition to “tuning” your mount, another way you can increase the length of time you can expose a single frame is to “guide” the exposure, either manually or automatically using a guide camera and computer program or a self-contained autoguider. Guiding (whether manual or automatic) is basically a matter of correcting for a mount’s inevitable tracking er-

rors. Manual guiding is generally performed by using either a second telescope mounted beside or on top of the primary imaging scope with a crosshair reticle eyepiece, or an off-axis guider, a device with a mirror or prism that redirects part of the light 90 degrees through a crosshair reticle eyepiece. You simply keep the crosshair centered on a guide star by making small corrections to the mount’s tracking using the buttons of its hand controller.

Autoguiding is more common these days and eliminates the tedium of spending hours staring at crosshairs (risking falling asleep and bumping the scope in the middle of a 4 hour imaging run at 3 a.m!). Autoguiding is performed by installing a second camera in place of the crosshair eyepiece and using a computer program such as PHD Guiding or any of the many commercial imaging programs that

can automatically control the mount and correct for tracking errors. There are also several self-contained autoguiding units that permit autoguiding without having to have a PC or laptop at the telescope, such as the LVI SmartGuider announced in the November 2008 issue of ATT, and the new Orion StarShoot Solitaire AutoGuider announced in this issue.

Autoguiding equipment has become quite reasonably priced and, unless you are really on a tight budget or think you would enjoy manual guiding, it is pretty hard to justify not autoguiding if your mount can support the additional weight. Orion now offers a complete autoguiding package that includes an 80-mm scope, dovetail bar, Starshoot Autoguider camera, and PHD Guiding software, all for no more than what a typical guide camera cost only a few years ago. Most autoguiding solutions do require a computer, but it does not need to be particularly powerful one – even an inexpensive, used laptop will suffice. Indeed, I am currently guiding with a computer that I purchased used for only $200. But, if you are not using a computer for other purposes, a self-contained guider is a great option.

Once you have tuned your mount, sorted out your autoguiding rig, mastered polar alignment and the arcane arts of image processing, and are able to gather hours of flawless data night after night, there is one other thing you may want to consider and that is whether or not to modify your DSLR (or to purchase a professionally modified camera) for enhanced red response to pick up more red nebulosity, specifically the Hydrogen Alpha wavelength.

The reason I left this topic until last is that there

Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

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GETTING STARTED IN ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY WITH DSLR CAMERAS are plenty of objects to photograph that do not benefit from a modified camera and considering the steep astrophotography learning curve and all the other issues you will deal with in the process of learning to take beautiful images, this just isn’t that big a deal unless you are sure you enjoy astrophotography and want to shoot emission nebula. Galaxies, star clusters, and reflection nebula don’t benefit at all from a modified DSLR. But, if you eventually find yourself wanting to get the most out of photographs of

emission nebula, as do most that get hooked on astrophotography, you’ll eventually also find yourself seriously considering this option.

For more information on “spectrum-enhanced” DSLR options, please see the accompanying insert.

I know I said DSLR astrophotography doesn’t have to be as complicated as many fear and, despite this, you’ve endured a long-winded article full of statements about things that are “beyond the scope of this article.” Nevertheless,

DSLR astrophotography is something you can easily master while having a lot of fun in the process. Just follow a step-by-step, buildingblock approach – start simple and build from there. This approach is also, happily, much less expensive! There is nothing wrong with doing a bit of research on more advanced topics as you work your way along the learning curve, but try to avoid getting ahead of yourself and don’t let the lure of long-exposure prime-focus photography sucker you in before you’re ready.

Spectrum-Enhanced DSLRs though those masochists may As Digital SLR cameras become increashave saved themselves a few huningly sophisticated and ever capable with each dred dollars, we’re left to wonder, passing year, the popularity of spectrum-en“Why?” (Actually, we’re left to hanced DSLRs is also increasing. Standard wonder far more than that!) AnalDSLRs are equipped with infrared (IR)-cutogy aside, the fact is that we know off filters that enhance standard terrestrial imof a number of technically profiages, but that also block some to the red cient astrophotographers who Hydrogen Alpha (Ha) spectrum that is critihave successfully modified their Spectrum-Enhanced Canon 20D with internal cal to optimum reproduction of astronomical DSLRs and, if you are absolutely thermometer installed. Shown with and without targets such as emission nebula. Modifying a confident in your technical profi- external readout unit attached.

DSLR by removing its IR-cutoff filter, or by stock IR-cutoff filter and a front filter. ciency and don’t mind voiding the factory replacing it with one that passes more of the Astro Hutech offers two options for the warranty on your camera, conversion filters Ha spectrum, results in a “spectrum-enrear filter: a clear, fully multi-coated filter that are available from such sources as Baader hanced” DSLR that more fully takes advanpasses all bands, including the IR, and an “asPlanetarium (www.alpineastro.com). tage of the DSLR sensor’s capacity to detect tronomical” filter that blocks UV and IR, For those of us who are the bandwidth critical while allowing recording of the astronomiless adventurous, profesto imaging some of cally important Ha spectrum. The front filters sionally modified DSLRs the night sky’s most celare mounted in a user accessible holder placed are readily available. Astro ebrated targets. Those between the camera’s lens bayonet and the inHutech offers spectrum-eninterested in spectrumternal viewing mirror where they can be eashanced versions of the enhanced DSLRs have ily inserted or removed as the user requires to DSLR models that are most two basic choices: (1) return the camera to standard daylight phopopular with astrophotogModify their DSLRs tography functionality. Or, the user can raphers, including those by themselves, or (2) invest achieve the same functionality by installing Canon, Fuji, Nikon, Panain a DSLR that has the appropriate conventional in-front-of-thesonic, and Olympus. Astro been professionally lens filter instead of a “front” filter. Either Hutech installs custom demodified. arrangement permits the user to enjoy the assigned filters that exactly As to ATM moditrophotography benefits of a spectrum-modmatch the light path of the fication of DSLRs, we ified DSLR that still operates as a factory-installed filters that caution that, while it fully-functional daylight camera as well. certainly can be done, Cutaway view of the front filter and they replace, thus insuring Best yet, Astro Hutech’s spectrumthere are some things rear filter locations in typical Astro that the camera’s autofocus Hutech Spectrum-Enhanced Canon modified DSLRs carry a full one-year continues to work properly. better left to the pros. To DSLR. warranty from that well-established Actually, the typical Astro present an extreme analcompany. For more information, visit Hutech spectrum-enhanced DSLR uses a ogy, we know of more than one example of www.astrohutech.com. two-filter system: a rear filter that replaces the DIY dental root canal procedures. But, al-

46 Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

The Stiletto IV Pro Achieving Sharp Focus with DSLR Cameras

By John Moody

Sharp focus is essential to producing beautiful astro images and it is also one of the most difficult skills to master. This may be especially true when imaging with Digital SLR (DSLR) cameras as they are designed for conventional photography rather than for astrophotography.

The normal method of focusing a DSLR, at least for conventional photography, is through the viewfinder, but it is virtually impossible to achieve accurate focus on small, dim astronomical objects this way. For this reason some sort of focusing aid is essential if you want to produce pleasing astro images with a DSLR. There are currently quite a few focusing aids available for use with DSLRs, all of which work with varying degrees of accuracy and with various advantages and disadvantages. One option that has actually been around quite a while is Stellar Technologies International’s Stiletto Series focus aid. The Stiletto uses proven optical principles to allow you to achieve precise focus quickly and easily.

The Stiletto Series IV Pro System The Stiletto Series IV Pro is a modular system consisting of a main body with diagonal and a camera mount. Its modular design allows one Stiletto main body to be used with more than one camera. For example, to switch from a DSLR to a dedicated CCD you need only invest in the Stiletto camera mount appropriate for that CCD rather than having to invest in an entirely new Stiletto system.

The Pro Edition as reviewed here comes with the main body and attached camera mount, an eyepiece, 300 lines-per-inch Ronchi and hybrid knife-edge screens, a mini CD with manuals and documentation (including videos!), and a really cool blue LED-lighted pen, all packaged in a nice compact custom foam-lined case as shown above. The camera mount is nicely machined and the crinkle finish body has a solid feel – overall the fit and finish of the Stiletto is excellent.

The diagonal has three collimation screws to center the image in the eyepiece. The unit with eyepiece inserted and ready to attach your T-ring and T-to-focuser adapter is shown in Image 2. The collimation screws are visible on the back of the diagonal. Also, the Stiletto comes already calibrated for the camera type you specify when you order it, but can also be “fine tuned” if necessary.

The Stiletto has several advantages that make it particularly suitable for use with a DSLR. One is that it doesn’t require any power or additional supporting equipment. If you image with a DSLR because you travel to dark skies and like the fact you don’t need a laptop or additional power supply and can get by with just some extra camera batteries and perhaps a remote/timer switch, then the Stiletto is your focusing aid! It is relatively small, light and easily portable. Also, the Stiletto is much faster than focusing by taking and examining individual exposures, then making adjustments, Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

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THE STILETTO IV PRO Image 2: Stiletto Pro with eyepiece inserted and ready to attach to the T-ring.

and repeating the cycle until optimum focus is obtained. It is even faster than most software focus routines as they still rely on taking multiple exposures and displaying some sort of metrics that you must interpret and then make focus changes in a repeating cycle. It works in a simple, straightforward visual manner that will seem very natural to any telescope user –

you can easily tell whether you are approaching focus or moving away from it.

Using the Stiletto Indeed, using the Stiletto is very easy.

Once you have centered a fairly bright star in your field of view you simply (1) place the included eyepiece into the diagonal, Image 3: Stiletto Pro System installed in the telescope and ready to use. bars disappear and the field of view is com(2) attach the prime focus adapter and T-ring pletely light. that you use for imaging with your DSLR to If you begin changing focus and the bars the Stiletto, (3) then slide the whole assembly get smaller and more numerous, this means into the telescope focuser just as you would you are moving the focuser in the wrong diyour camera (see Image 3). Once the assemrection. Occasionally you might be unable to bly is secured in the focuser you (4) rotate the get a bar free image or the bars may flash on eyepiece into a comfortable position (the diagand off which, according to STI’s documentaonal rotates) and look into it. You should see a tion, means the seeing is really bad – probably light field of view with the dark bars of the too bad for astrophotography. I must say I have Ronchi screen across it. (5) Simply begin to only experienced this phenomenon once and change focus until you see the bars grow in size it was intermittent enough that I was still able and diminish in number. Continue until the

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THE STILETTO IV PRO to achieve focus, despite that fact that I live in an area that generally has pretty poor seeing. In fact, one of the things I most like about the Stiletto is that it seems to work consistently even when the seeing is what I consider relatively bad. When using software-focus routines during our frequent bad seeing conditions, I often have to take several exposures at each focus setting once I think I am getting close to achieving focus, because the brightness or FWHM numbers frequently change almost as much due to the seeing as they do between focus changes. I can take several images for the software-focus routine and each may have fairly different numbers, but even during these periods the Stiletto still works consistently.

Depending on the focal ratio of your scope you may find that there is a relatively small amount of focus travel between the visual bars produced by the Stiletto appearing to disappear and reappear. If this is the case you need to focus in the middle of this travel or you may want to try the “hybrid knife edge” screen. It is perhaps a bit more difficult to use than the Ronchi screen, but is even more accurate. The reason it is harder to use is that indication that you are approaching focus is not as obvious and you can quickly pass the point of focus without noticing it. You need to use a very bright star for knife edge focusing. It is probably best to get close with your camera viewfinder, an eyepiece that is close to parfocal to your camera, or the Stiletto using a Ronchi screen, and then perfect your focus with the knife edge.

The biggest difference in using the knife edge screen is that you don’t use the Series IV body, just the camera adapter. The other difference is that you don’t see any continuous change in the image indicating whether you are getting closer to focus or not. Instead you get a very quick change of the light and dark areas of the image making it necessary to pay close attention to avoid missing the point of true focus.

It is however, as I said, even more accurate than the Ronchi screen. You can also move the telescope and see if the light from the star “winks out” quickly or fades more slowly to verify whether you are in focus or not. It should change rapidly from light to dark (or vice versa) rather than fading slowly. The process of focusing with the knife edge is actually more difficult to explain than it is to do and in this case a picture (or video!) is worth a thousand words.

The Stiletto website (www.stellarinternational.com) provides a video that sis far more instructive than this explanation.

Once you have achieved focus you simply disconnect the Stiletto from your T-ring/adapter and attach your camera to it. Before doing this you will want Image 4: This Image of IC405 and IC410 were taken with the author’s to “lock” your fo- spectrum enhanced Canon DSLR after achieving critical focus using the cuser if it has a Stiletto Pro IV System. method of doing now and, even though I occasionally play this so you don’t accidentally move the drawaround with other focusing methods, I am untube while removing the Stiletto or attaching willing to let go of the Stiletto. If you want a your camera. Once you have removed the quick, easy and reliable focus aid that is easily Stiletto and attached your camera to the T-ring transportable and doesn’t require a computer, you are ready to take sharply focused pictures power, or additional accessories, then the like the one in Image 4.

Stiletto is the solution for you!

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Deep Sky Printing

By Craig Stark

Displaying Your Favorite Astrophotos at Their Best

A good number of years ago, my uncle Brad got me a present. I'd seen the original Hubble Deep Field shot and spent a few awe-struck minutes scanning around its incredible detail. Without Brad, that moment would have been wonderful, but transient. Our world today is so data-rich and so fast paced that, all too often, something like that Hubble image may strike us for a moment, but then we move on.

What Brad did that changed this was to give me a professionally made print of the shot that I promptly framed and hung on the wall of my office. There, it continued to impact me and those who visited my office day after day. A number of years later, I got to return the favor. I gave him (and myself, of course), the 84-hour Hubble shot of the small region in the halo of M31 showing globular clusters within M31 and thousands of galaxies in the image – an image that would cover a swath of sky so small that it's only about what a grain of sand covers at arm’s length. Having the print of that on the wall let the impact of that shot hit me again and again and gave the visitors to my office

something more to think about.

Those shots were reasonably well-done, but times and technologies have changed and when offered the opportunity to see just what a modern printing service that had a specialization in astrophotography could do, I leapt at the chance. Enter Tony Rodrigues of Deep Sky Printing (www.deepskyprinting.com). Deep Sky Printing is a division of a professional photo printing service, Printmakers, Inc., that is tailored to work with our astrophotographs.

Upload your shots to their website and a few days later prints will appear via UPS. For testing out their services, I decided to use a few of my own shots and a few shots from the Hubble. I included the Hubble shots because there's no way that anything of mine can justify a 20-inch by 30-inch print and there's no way that it would do justice to what Deep Sky Printing can do when given really good data. For my shots, I did a color image of the Western Veil off of my square-format QSI 540 and a blackand-white shot of a wide-field mosaic of Orion in H-alpha that covers a swath from

the Orion Nebula to the Horsehead Nebula (also off the QSI 540). The Veil shot got printed both on a 16-inch by 16-inch piece of Deep Sky Printing’s normal Kodak metallic paper and on an 8-inch by 8-inch ceramic tile (more on this later). For the Hubble shots, I had an 8-inch by 16-inch made of the Eagle Nebula, a 12-inch by 12inch made of the Crab Nebula, and a monster 20-inch by 30-inch shot made of the ultra-deep image of the Whirlpool Galaxy.

Setting up Your Prints Setting up your order could hardly be easier. Just go to the main website (www.deepskyprinting.com) and click on the Place Order link. A new window will appear and a Java applet will load (I had to reload this page once for some reason probably an issue on my end). You'll see much like what we have here in Figure 1.

First, take a guess as to the paper size you're going to want to print on by selecting something in Select a Product in the upper-left.

Then, in the lower-right, click on the icon that says Folder and point it to the folder on Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

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DEEP SKY PRINTING

Figure 1: Main window from Deep Sky Printing in which you select your images, print size, and mounting options. Here, you also compose the final print.

your drive with your images. You'll then see thumbnails of your shots appear (as in Figure 1) under the heading Choose Your Images (by default, it also searches subdirectories of that directory, a behavior you can disable by selecting Preferences). Simply grab one you want to work on and drag it into the middle to see how it lines up on the paper you chose.

If the aspect-ratio doesn't fit your shot, you'll see this as either a white border on your preview of the paper (Figure 2, left) or a shadow of your image going over the edge of the “paper” (Figure 2, middle). When this happens, you've got two solid options.

First, you can try a different size piece of paper. Just click on another one in your Select a Product area to try it out. Here, on this shot of the Eagle from the Hubble, we can see that an 8-inch by 16-inch (Figure 2, right) is doing very well where the 11-inch by 14-inch did not (left and middle). One of the things I particularly liked about setting up the order was the choice of sizes. As we do montages and as we end up cropping

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Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

DEEP SKY PRINTING

Figure 2: Sample previews of composition for the Eagle Nebula shot. Blue border shows the edge of the print. The first image (left) shows excess white space that will come out as a large white border on these two sides. The second (middle) shows the image overflowing the top and bottom margin (dark shadow of image). The third shows the image as it would be printed on a different size of paper with a different aspect ratio.

the shot, the odds of your picture nicely fitting into an 8x10, 8x12, or 11x14 or other variants on those aspect ratios drop precipitously. Here, you get 7x10, 8x8, 8x10, 8x12, 8x16, 8x24, 10x10, 10x18, 10x20, 11x14, 12x12, 12x18, 12x24, 14x22, 16x16, 16x20, 16x24, 20x20, 20x24, 20x30, 24x24, 24x30, and 24x36. (Prices here range from $4.25 through $55, with everything 12x12 and below costing $10 or less.)

Second, you can zoom and crop the image if things don't line up on the paper the way you'd like them to. A slider lets you zoom the image and you can just drag the image around to compose the shot as you desire. If things get too odd (or even as a matter of course), you can click on the Crop or Fit checkbox to have it automatically scale and compose the shot for you so that it fits on the paper.

Once you have the shot composed the way you like it, it's time to consider a few entries in the Options section before you commit your order. Deep Sky Printing can

Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

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DEEP SKY PRINTING mount the shot on standard foam board or on Gatorfoam (a Polystyrene foam that's more durable than standard foam core).

Both will give you a nice, rigid surface to help protect your shot (or to serve as a convenient and easy way to display the shot).

Here, you'll also find two entries for Image Tone. While I doubt many of us will want to make our shots sepia, the Black and White option is one many of us will want to select. Doing this will ensure that your print comes out in pure black and white and that there isn't a slight hue to it. Back in the days of black and white paper, you had to work to get a non-neutral tone if you wanted one and otherwise a nice neutral grayscale was assured. But, these days even black and white prints are printed on color paper. I've tried having black and white shots printed elsewhere and, all too often, they come out with a slight hue. If you've got a black and white shot like the wide-field Ha shot of the Orion area I sent off, you'll want to check this box to make sure it comes out spot-on gray. A tip of the hat to Deep Sky Printing

for letting us tell them this.

With your shot and options selected, it's time to add this to your order. Hit the Add to Order button and your shot will be added to a queue (you can look at the queue with the aptly-named Queue button). Go through this for each of your shots and, when you're ready to send the whole order, click on Review Order.

Finalizing and Uploading At this point, you'll see a screen that lets you review your entire order. It'll show you the prices of each item and give you your shipping options. You can go back and edit shots (or delete shots) here as well. On this page, you'll also find a checkbox labeled “Do not adjust color and density.” More on this later, but it's something to consider before finalizing things. Once you're done here, click on Complete Order and the payment and upload process will begin. If these are your shots, odds are the upload process will go quickly. If these are several hundred megabyte images from the Hubble, odds are

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Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

it's time to go grab a beverage of choice.

Test Run: Color and Contrast Check For the review, I decided to do a test run before placing a large order with big prints. I know what shots look like on my monitors and I've made some effort to calibrate them. (I use a Mac and there is a nice built-in calibration routine you can use if you don't like the stock profiles supplied by the monitor makers.) The concern, though, was that the printout would look different.

In particular, the gamma (brightness/contrast curve) is a problem I've hit before and never really known whether it comes down to the printing being off or my monitor being off. So, I assembled a montage in PhotoShop of several shots I planned on using and I even had a few versions of several. I sent this test shot off and when it returned, I compared it to the on-screen view. I'm pleased to say that the monitormaker's calibration curves worked well and that the on-screen view looked very close to the test print. That said, before you go and place a large order, it's not a bad idea at all to do something like this as well. A quick 8inch by 10-inch print is cheap insurance against a botched poster-sized print when the problem comes down to your monitor not being properly setup.

Earlier, I mentioned the “Do not adjust color and density” option you can enable at the end of your order and it deserves some explaining. By default, Deep Sky Printing will attempt to set black and white points for you and to get the color spot-on. This worked wonderfully for the Hubble shots, but on the first attempt with the Veil shot, the black point I set was elevated enough so that the resulting print, when re-adjusted, ended up too dark (after talking with Tony, I ordered a replacement of this shot).

Selecting this option will tell them that you've adjusted it just the way you want it and to print it as-is (even if the black isn't really black, etc.). If you're confident in your monitor's calibration (remember running that test print?) and know what you're doing here, feel free to check this. It's

DEEP SKY PRINTING another tip of the hat to Deep Sky Printing as they thought to offer us this control. We can choose to let them tweak things to get a nice print or to skip that step and give us full control. Kudos!

The Results A few days after placing my order, a nice big, flat box arrived. Deep Sky Printing did a fantastic job protecting the prints (shipped flat) in the box. Prints of similar sizes were grouped (separated by tissue) and protected on both sides by pieces of cardboard (taped). Short of dunking the box in water or piercing it through with a fork-lift, the prints were going to come through any shipping mishaps intact.

Before sending shots off, I didn't think I had anything really worthy of printing (you can see the Veil and Orion shots on my homepage - http://www.starklabs.com/craig). They're a lot better than my shots of several years ago, but there's still a lot to be learned. That said, a 10-inch by 10-inch print from my square-sensor cam-

era is only $5.55. Are they really not worth the price of a couple of lattes? Well, if you're still thinking that they're not worth it, think again. My shots look much better on one of Deep Sky Printing’s prints than they do on the screen. They're crisp, but have a smoothness and depth I just don't get on my monitors. Printed out, they have a sense of permanence or formality that they don't get on the screen. Even I have to admit that they're actually pretty nice shots!

They're also a lot easier to mount on the wall and to then use as a way of sharing the hobby with those who know little about it. While on the topic of mounting, I can report that both the normal foamboard and the Gatorfoam mounting work well and can let you easily display a shot without framing.

I mentioned earlier the ceramic tile I ordered and the quality of the output here was a nice surprise. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, having only seen prints on ceramic in the form of a “Happy Father's Day!” mug that looks vaguely like a shot of one of

my sons and me (and I'm not sure which son). The technology is clearly not the same as Deep Sky Printing’s is a fantastic rendition of the image. It's got a glossy surface that has wonderful depth and smoothness to it. The colors and the sharpness are excellent. How cool would it be to use these as accent tiles somewhere?

The real surprise came when looking at the Hubble shots. You may have been awed when looking at these on your computer screen – I know I was. I also know firsthand now that that doesn't hold a candle to the impact Deep Sky Printing's metallic prints of them. The metallic paper gives the colors a depth that is hard for this scientist to describe other than to say that they are simply stunning. When the box arrived and was unpacked, a few colleagues happened by and saw the shots laid out on a table.

Minutes went by as each stared at them with a look that just said “Wow!” They are really that beautiful. Really. And I now know what I'm getting Brad for Christmas this year!

Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

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Neil Fleming Astro-Imaging Tutor Extraordinaire

By Dave Snay

Have you ever wondered how some astro-photographers are able to produce images that are far superior to your own, even though they are using equivalent equipment? What about the guys and gals who generate stunning images from locations that are compromised by horrendous light pollution?

I have struggled with the effort to produce high quality images using my reasonably good-quality equipment from a relatively poor site for several years and have made what I think are pretty significant strides up the steep learning curve of image processing. But I’ve never been able to produce images that I thought stood up to those regularly produced by some of the other photographers in my local area, let alone images produced by folks in better locations. I’ve spent many hours trying to figure out what was wrong with my equipment, envying the high-end gear used by some of the imaging giants, but eventually resigned myself to what I felt were second-tier results, at best. Well, it turns out it’s not my equipment. It’s me!

Image 1

More accurately, it’s my post-processing skills.

There are quite a few great resources available for us to improve our processing skills and there is much to be learned from all of them, assuming you are good at the self-teaching thing. It’s probably safe to say that most of us are, or we wouldn’t have achieved much success at astronomy or astrophotography. However, reference

material can only take me so far. At some point I find it necessary to ask someone a question or two, or twelve. Neil Fleming offers a service for just that occasion, wherever you are on that learning curve.

Neil has chosen to work with you interactively to help you understand his techniques and I’ll explain the details a little later in this article. But first I want to walk you through an example.

Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

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NEIL FLEMING I posted the image of M81 and M82 shown in Image 1 to the cloudynights.com CCD Imaging & Processing forum asking for advice on how to further improve the results. I had worked on the image for several days and felt I had exhausted my ability and quite possibly the potential of the data. Most of the feedback was positive and along the lines of “Nice job, you should be proud of what you’ve got.”

Then Neil chimed in with some nice compliments and his rendition of what could be done to complete the process.

Image 2 shows his improved version. Not only did he bring out hidden details in the galaxies, but he really improved the star quality as well.

Needless to say, we were all incredibly impressed with his improvements. When I asked how he accomplished it, he gave a few pointers that I didn’t quite understand and when I pressed for further explanation, Neil graciously offered to give me a walk through to explain the steps.

Image 2

Once we agreed on a time that worked for both of us, Neil suggested I download and install a couple pieces of software to facilitate the process. The first is LogMeIn which allowed me to give Neil access to my system so that we would both

be active on the same machine. That way, when he made modifications I could see what he meant and he could see me indicate where I had questions. The second software was Skype, with which everyone is probably already familiar (unless you

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NEIL FLEMING Image 3

live under a rock, in which case none of this matters). That way we could talk to each other instead of trying to use an instant messenger or the more cumbersome plain old telephone. By doing this all electronically, you can also install software

that lets you record both video and audio so you have a record of the session for later reference.

We decided to work from Neil’s result, which he had saved as a PhotoShop image, complete with all the layers he

used during his processing. Before we got hooked up I opened the image in PhotoShop so that we could use it as a reference.

Once we were ready, Neil proceeded to walk me through each step represented by the layers. He explained what each one was intended to accomplish and how the technique worked to reach that goal.

Let me tell you, Neil is not only very good at processing the data, but he is exceptionally adept at describing what he is doing. He is very patient, unassuming, and easy to understand. As we progressed through the session, he listened to my questions and focused on addressing them before moving on to the next step.

The next day I decided to try my hand at recreating the improved version of the image. My goal was to come as close as possible to the version Neil had created. Admittedly, I had the advantage of being able to use Neil’s version for reference. Considering that my goal was to see if I could recall and reinforce the lessons learned, I thought it was a reasonable

Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

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NEIL FLEMING approach. My version is shown in Image 3. I think I did okay.

Neil provides this type of tutoring service for very reasonable rates as advertised on his website at http://www.flemingastrophotography.com/ astrotutoring.html. You can also visit his

primary site at http://www.flemingastrophotography.com to see his amazing images as well as some very helpful image processing tips that he has written up and posted for all to use. He also has recommendations on some of his favorite astronomy software tools.

NEIL FLEMING Neil Fleming is a noted astrophotographer, specializing in the capture of very high-quality images from light polluted locations, such as those in the Boston area. His images have been published in both Sky & Telescope and Astronomy magazines, and featured on the popular, “Astronomy Picture of the Day” (APOD) web site. Additionally, his imagery was included in Timothy Ferris’ PBS documentary, Seeing in the Dark.

Fleming’s speaking engagements have included such popular conferences as the Advanced Imaging Conference (San Jose, CA), the Midwest AstroImaging Conference, and the NorthEast Astro-Imaging Conference – each an annual event oriented towards astrophotographers wanting to learn more about the techniques used for advanced image processing.

In his day job, Fleming is the Director of Professional Services for Lumigent Technologies, Inc., a firm specializing in database auditing products for application governance, risk, and compliance, and regulatory compliance in such areas as Sarbanes-Oxley.

60 Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

I should note that Neil and I are not exactly strangers. We live within 40 miles of each other and have exchanged email on many occasions. As far as I know, the only time we’ve met was at the 2008 NEAIC and that was as part of a group hand shake kind of thing where one rarely remembers any of the names that go with the faces.

My session with Neil lasted about an hour and we stayed completely within PhotoShop. However, he can help you with everything from catching that first photon to teasing out details you never imagined were in the data.

As shown on his web site, tutorial topics could include: (1) Initial image processing with CCDStack, MaxIM, (2) Deconvolution and DDP, (3) other tools like Registar, Tria, FocusMagic, (4) the myriad possible techniques in Adobe Photoshop, such as data optimization, advanced selections and layers, sharpening (Smart Sharpen, Unsharp Masking, "True" Unsharp Masking, Multi-layer High Pass Sharpening), color balancing and adjustments, gradient control, and mosaics, (5) image acquisition and guiding techniques with MaxIM or CCDSoft, (6) automation approaches with CCDCommander or CCDA, (7) mount alignment with T-Point or PoleAlignMax, and (8) use of FocusMax. Clearly Neil’s expertise extends far beyond Photoshop tools and techniques.

Consider that Neil is located just outside Boston and its associated light pollution and the results he routinely achieves, and you’ll undoubtedly agree he is eminently qualified to help us all make the best of our available data.

If you find yourself looking at a manual, digging through reference material, or searching the web for solutions and/or advice and thinking that maybe you’ve reached the end of the road, you might want to consider reaching out to Neil – he’ll be able to show you some new tricks.

And if you’re just starting out, his friendly communication skills will have you up and running in no time.

The Orion 190-mm Maksutov-Newtonian A Fast, Flat-Field, Large-Aperture, and Yet Affordable Astrograph View down the tube of the Orion 190-mm MaksutovNewtonian Astrograph showing the corrector plate, baffles and primary mirror.

By James R. Dire, Ph.D.

The past few years I have used an 8inch f/7 Newtonian and a Stellarvue 4inch f/7.9 apochromatic refractor for observing and digital photography. The large focal ratio of the Newtonian minimizes coma throughout most of the field of view incident on the CCD in my Santa Barbara Instruments Group (SBIG) Model ST-2000 XCM camera. Similarly, the large focal ratio refractor has a fairly flat field throughout most of its field of view and provides excellent results with the CCD camera. Today, most DSLR and large-format CCD cameras have imaging chips that are four times larger than that of the ST-2000 CCD camera and the normal optical aberrations in these two instruments become apparent near the edges

of images taken with large-format digital cameras.

As much as I loved the visual views in both of these telescopes, I decided to shop around for an instrument with a flatter field of view. Three telescope designs that offer very flat fields are Ritchey-Crètien (RC) reflectors, Petzval design refractors, and Maksutov-Newtonian reflectors. Reflectors always provide more aperture per dollar – since I was looking for an instrument with around an 8-inch aperture and didn’t want another mortgage on my house, that eliminated a refractor.

Ritchey-Crètiens have been very popular in the last decade and most large, modern professional telescopes use this design. In recent years, RC telescopes as

small as 8-10 inches have appeared on the market and some are surprisingly affordable. But these scopes typically come in focal ratios around 9 to 10 – quite slow for photographic use.

Although generally of high quality and capability, Maksutov-Newtonian reflectors are not as well known as other optical designs. But that may change rather quickly with Orion Telescopes & Binocular’s introduction of a 190-mm (7.5 inch) Maksutov-Newtonian (Mak-Newt) astrograph. I decided to order one of these telescopes and give it a thorough workout in my backyard observatory (www.wildwoodpines.org). The Orion astrograph only has half the focal length of an 8-inch f/10 instrument, but its f/5.3 focal ratio is Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

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THE ORION 190-MM MAKSUTOV-NEWTONIAN

The Orion 190-mm Maksutov-Newtonian Astrograph in the author’s observatory on a Parallax HD150 German equatorial mount with a 4-inch apochromatic refractor guide scope.

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Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

exceedingly fast for a scope of such generous aperture, resulting in much shorter exposure times for deep space objects!

I ordered the 190-mm astrograph on a Monday – right after Orion’s website showed they were in stock. Orion estimated five business days for shipping and my scope arrived on the Federal Express truck the following Saturday. In addition to the optical tube assembly, I ordered a set of 9.25-inch Orion tube rings, a dew controller and heating strip for the front corrector. All catadioptric telescope corrector plates tend to dew over when the night temperature drops below the dew point, so the heating strip is a must for long imaging sessions.

The astrograph came nicely packed with a double cardboard box and foam protection. After unpacking, I carefully inspected the nicely polished white tube assembly for damage and found none.

The corrector plate and mirrors were clean and free of defects except that the primary mirror had some blemishes in the

coatings from the manufacturing process.

Although these did not appear to affect the telescope’s performance, I elected to request a replacement and Orion cheerfully obliged, even paying the shipping charges for returning the first scope.

After unpacking the scope and components, I first attached the tube rings onto my Parallax HD150 German equatorial mount. The rings are not as thick and heavy as Parallax rings, but they are rugged and sturdy. One nice thing about this ring design is that when fullyclamped the bolts can be backed off a few turns to allow the tube to rotate without unclamping the rings. I attached a second set of adjustable rings to the Orion rings so my 4-inch apo could ride piggyback to the 190-mm astrograph.

The astrograph’s manual stated the telescope was factory collimated and may not need adjustment. Ha, like I really believed that! A small Phillips screwdriver is needed to adjust both mirrors. Additionally a 2.5-mm Allen wrench is required to

THE ORION 190-MM MAKSUTOV-NEWTONIAN

5-Dminute exposure of globular cluster M13 located in the constellation Hercules.

collimate the primary mirror. Orion includes these tools with the telescope.

I visually checked the alignment of the secondary by sighting down the tube and through the open focuser. The orientation of the focuser and secondary mirror looked good. Then I inserted a laser collimation tool. A plastic cover must be manually removed to expose the secondary mirror collimation screws and this had to be done without touching the corrector plate to avoid hand smudges on the plate.

The primary mirror has a 0.25-inch black hole reinforcement sticker marking its center. After a few small turns of secondary collimation screws, the secondary was aligned. Both tools were required to adjust the tilt of the primary mirror in a push-pull fashion for each of the three

Combination of three 10-minutes exposures of the planetary nebula M27 taken with an SBIG ST-2000XCM CCD camera.

points of adjustment behind the mirror, but I found this to be simple and straightforward. The entire collimation process took about five minutes.

The telescope is designed for use as an astrograph. This means the optical path from the primary mirror to the focuser is shorter than that of a normal telescope of the same focal length to allow images to come to focus on a camera’s sensor. The focuser only has an inch of adjustment to prevent its barrel from obstructing the light path inside of the optical tube assembly (OTA). Orion includes a 2-inch long, 2-inch inner diameter focus extender so the telescope can be used visually.

I choose the star Vega for first light to allow me to star test the collimation. I placed identical 26-mm Plossl eyepieces

in the 1000-mm focal-length Mak-Newt and 800-mm focal-length apochromatic refractor to compare them under identical environmental conditions. In the 190mm astrograph, the diffraction rings were perfectly symmetric, showing the collimation was perfect. After adjusting the three-point screws on the apo’s rings to make both scopes parallel, I moved them over to Epsilon Lyrae, the Double-Double. Despite the astrograph’s central obstruction and average seeing conditions, the Mak-Newt easily resolved all four stars of the Double-Double at 38x. There was no indication that the OTA had not reached thermal equilibrium after only one hour under dark skies.

For the next few hours I explored star clusters, galaxies and nebulae, going back

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Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

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THE ORION 190-MM MAKSUTOV-NEWTONIAN and forth between the two telescopes. The views through the Mak-Newt were splendid. The field was flat from edge to edge and noticeably better near the edges than in the refractor.

The next night I attached my Canon 30D camera to the astrograph for primefocus digital imaging and installed my SBIG ST-2000XCM camera on the apo as an autoguider. I attached a T-ring with a 2-inch nosepiece to the camera and inserted it into the focuser. The large setscrew on the focuser’s compression ring held the camera firmly in place. The Orion 190-mm Mak-Newt comes with a Crayford focuser with two large handles, but a two-speed focuser would have been useful to speed up the otherwise tedious manual focusing process. Once focused, the test images contained pinpoint stars across the entire field of view. Since the Canon 30D has no internal cooling, I usually only use it for imaging below 55° F, and because the temperature was in the

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70s, I decided to switch to the thermalelectric cooled SBIG CCD camera.

Although heavier than the Canon 30D, the compression ring held it firmly in place. Unfortunately, I was unable to achieve focus with the Crayford focuser’s one inch of travel – it would not extend out far enough to achieve focus. I attached the two-inch focus extender, but then the focuser would not go in far enough to achieve focus. So, I ordered a one-inch focus extender and when it arrived I was able to focus the CCD camera.

Images with the CCD camera were as impressive as with the Canon 30D. My first target was M13, the finest globular cluster in the northern sky, which after five minutes was rendered perfectly on the CCD. Then I went for M27, one of the easiest planetary nebulas to photograph.

Combining three 10-minute exposures yielded more detail in the nebula than I’d ever before obtained. My third object was the Western Veil Nebula, adjacent to the

star 52 Cygni. Six stacked 10-minute exposures yielded crisp wispy red and blue gas filaments with pin-point stars at all edges of the image. For deep-space objects, the Mak-Newt’s fast focal ratio provided excellent results with a fraction of the exposure times it would take with an f/9 optical system. Plus, the large field of view made finding a guide star on the SBIG camera’s tracking chip a simple matter.

In conclusion, the scope is everything it is advertised to be. It is nicely crafted, fast and has an incredibly flat field. Orion doesn’t advertise the specs on the primary mirror, but they must be close to diffraction-limited. With no primary mirror specifications and given the fact that the astrograph does not come with a twospeed focuser, I question calling it a “premium” instrument. However, for digital imaging and visual use, the telescope is a great value compared to alternate optical designs of similar aperture.

An ATM FocusMotor Controller Keeping Things in Focus

By Rick Saunders

Focusing can be a chore at times and, if you are one of the practitioners of the arcane art of astrophotography, achieving the best focus possible is critical. Any tool that helps an imager get to that point is worth more than gold and to my mind no focusing aid is as useful as a motorized focuser. The ability to focus while looking at a computer image is priceless and, even for visual observing, the ability to adjust focus without any wobbles and jitters makes life a lot simpler.

A motorized focuser is comprised of a motor, a method to control the motor, and some way of connecting the motor to the telescope. Together they should be able to do three things well: (1) focus

Image 1: The Circuit Diagram

in either direction, (2) start focusing on command and, when done, (3) stop focusing on command. This might sound quite simple, but it does take a bit of thought. The circuit diagram shows one set of solutions to these challenges.

To turn a DC motor bi-directionally simply requires that the polarity of the voltage going to the motor is able to be reversed as needed. This can be done simply with two reversing switches. A reversing push button switch known as an “on/momentary on” switch will reverse the polarity when pressed and return to its original state when released. To focus both directions, two switches are needed each

of which has three terminals. One of these is common and goes to one of the motor’s terminals, while one of the other two terminals on each switch will be connected to ground (negative), and the remaining to the battery positive.

Stopping the motor accurately takes some thought as DC motors tend to “freewheel” for a bit after the power is removed which, if not taken into account, has an effect on the accuracy of the focuser. The simplest way to stop a motor immediately is to short the motor’s two leads together – a method known as “dynamic braking.”

Using the switches described above, both motor terminals are shorted together when neither button is pressed, which

Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

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AN ATM FOCUS-MOTOR CONTROLLER

Image 2: The SW1, SW2, SW3 Wiring Diagram

provides the braking effect.

For this project I’m using “double pole, double throw” (DPDT) switches, each of which is, in effect, two complete switches in a single unit. One circuit of each switch controls the motor voltage polarity as described, and the other (both switches wired in parallel – see the wire diagram in Image 2) turns the power on to the electronics when either button is pressed.

Speed control is achieved using a method called “pulse width modulation” (PWM) which simply means that the motor circuit is pulsed (turned on and off ) very rapidly. As long as the switching frequency is high enough, the motor will see the source as DC with a varying voltage and that is perfect for a DC motor where the voltage relates to speed. For fast speeds the circuit is on longer than it is off

Image 3: Schematic Diagram

and vice-versa for slow speeds. The ratio of on-time to off-time is known as the “duty cycle.” PWM is easy with a small and inexpensive integrated circuit chip known as a “555 timer.” This chip generates an adjustable duty cycle square wave at various frequencies.

I want the focus controller to be as simple to use as possible so I'm adding complexity inside the box in order to simplify the controls outside the box. The entire user-interface is the potentiometer to adjust the speed and the two buttons. As mentioned above, each button will also serve to connect the power to the timer

circuit. This saves battery power as nothing in the box is powered until a focusing button is pressed.

The timer circuit generates a square wave which turns on and off a metaloxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) – in this case at about 2.3 KHz – to complete the motor’s connection to ground. When the transistor is on the current flows through the motor and when it is off the circuit is broken. The potentiometer serves to adjust the duty cycle between 14% and 94%.

The schematic diagram provided in Image 3 shows how this all works. Note the four diodes around the motor which are used to protect the transistor from stray voltages. When power to a DC motor is cut, the magnetic field in its coils collapses and a large voltage can be generated. The diodes serve to steer this into the positive side of the power supply (battery) to keep it from damaging the transistor. The circuit can run on any voltage from 5 to 16 volts and would be a perfect match for a 9v battery or a 12v connection from a mount.

SW1, SW2 and SW3 are for the switch connections as per the wiring diagram shown in Image 2. Male headers with 0.1-inch spacing can be used if unplugging the connections from the board is needed, but with the box I used just soldering the wires onto the board works fine.

The board itself, which is very small, can fit in any plastic enclosure that will

Parabolic & Spherical optics Elliptical Diagonal Flats Complete interferometric data 27 years (full-time) experience

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AN ATM FOCUS-MOTOR CONTROLLER

Image 4: Battery and case

hold the buttons and connectors, but I would purchase the Hammond box specified in the parts list. It has card-guides molded into the sides which, if the board is carefully trimmed, will hold the board upright in the case with no screws needed.

There is enough room behind the board for the battery and potentiometer and enough ahead of the board for the

Image 5: Author’s C8 with Focus Motor Installed

switches. As you can see from Image 4 at the top of the article, I've mounted the potentiometer on the bottom side of the case, but you can layout your box as you see fit. With this case layout I had to trim away the two corners that protrude from the body of the case to allow the battery and potentiometer wires to pass over the board.

The simplest method of connecting a motor to a focuser is to use a belt, a method that allows for great latitude in motor placement. A plastic pulley on the motor’s output shaft can turn a belt (or an “asparagus elastic” – great things those) that is wrapped around one of your focusing knobs (this works better with Crayfords than with rack-and-pinion). If

PARTS LIST Part

DigiKey #

Price

1 x 555 CMOS timer chip 1 x IRF530A n-channel PowerFET (or suitable equivalent) 4 x 1N4936 1A fast-recovery diodes 1 x 1/4W 10K resistor (min quantity 5) 1 x 1/4W 3K9 resistor (min quantity 5) 1 x 1N914B fast recovery diode 1 x 50K potentiometer with knob 2 x .1uF ceramic disk capacitors (min quantity 10) 1 x .01uF ceramic disk capacitor (min quantity 10) 2 x On-(mom on) DPDT push button switches 2 x Red caps for switches 1 x Hammond 1591LBK project box A connector for the motor A connector for power (or 9v pigtail)

LM555CNNS-ND IRF530PBF-ND 1N4936DICT-ND 10KQBK-ND 3.9KQBK-ND 1N914BCT-ND See below BC1101CT-ND 1103PHCT-ND 360-2152-ND 360-2164-ND HM113-ND See below See below

$1.46 $1.62 $2.04 $0.32 (pack) $0.32 (pack) $0.05 $0.81 (pack) $0.72 (pack) $15.00 $1.38 $6.46

The switches are by far the most expensive parts in this build. From Digikey they cost $7.50 each but they are VERY good parts and well worth the expense. The rest of the parts came to about $15.00 not counting the potentiometer which can be had for about $4.00 from somewhere like Radio Shack (part number 271-002 with switch which is not needed) or cheaper at an electronics outlet. A knob for it will cost about another $1.00. Get your connectors and wire from RS also.

Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

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AN ATM FOCUS-MOTOR CONTROLLER it is to be used on a Schmidt-Cass or Mak-Cass with a moving primary, it can be done as I did it by adding a pulley to the focus knob. With a refractor an overlong dovetail bar that reaches back to near the focuser would be a great place to mount a motor.

On my old C8 (shown in Image 5), there were suitable tapped holes in the rear casing (after I removed it from the forks) to allow me to mount a hand cut and bent sheet-metal bracket for my motor. If your scope doesn’t have anywhere to mount a

68 Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

bracket and you have to drill and tap some holes, taking precautions against metal flakes flying around inside your tube. If you don’t want to drill and tap, you’ll have to get creative. My bracket is cut out of thin sheet aluminum and is in three pieces: two arms down the sides to provide stiffness and a bent plate that holds the gear-head motor. The belt (here just an elastic band) runs from a brass pulley on the motor to the pulley fixed to the focusing knob.

Using a long wire between the motor

and the controller can also be useful. This can actually be quite long as voltage drop isn’t an issue unless extremely fine wire is used. Enough length means one can be sitting at a laptop several feet from the telescope and still use the powered focuser while analyzing images on the computer screen.

All-in-all it’s a handy little project and fairly simple to build. You can find the PhotoShop file containing the board mask, layout etc. at: http://ozastro.dyndns.org/variable_focuser_board1.psd.

The Williams Optics Easy Easy Touch To Use, ALT-AZ Easy To Recommend!

Mount

By Erik Wilcox

There seems to be a resurgence in inexpensive altitude-azimuth style (alt-az) mounts these days. Many years ago, I remember buying my first alt-az mount for a small refractor I owned, wanting an alternative to the cumbersome equatorial (EQ) mount I was then using.

But at the time, there were very few alt-az mounts available that didn't cost a fortune. The shaky alt-az I finally ended up buying caused a lot of frustration, negating any advantage it offered in terms of portability.

These days there are far more choices, many of which are available at very attractive prices. Some still use the flimsy aluminum legs similar to those found on the dreaded “department store” telescopes, or suffer from inordinate backlash, but this is most certainly not the case with the William Optics Easy Touch ALTAZ. Instead, it offers all of the qualities I look for in a competent alt-az. For mounting a small refractor, I feel that an alt-az mount should offer several characteristics: stability, together

with smooth, backlash-free motions in both axes, and most of all, portability. After all, the reason many buy an alt-az mount is for quick looks and easy transport.

I received the Easy Touch ALT-AZ from William Optics in two boxes, both of which were extremely well-packed. Upon opening the box which contained the tripod legs, I was immediately impressed with the wooden finish and overall build quality. The surveyor tripod style legs look pleasingly “retro,” complete with a handy, built-in adjustable carrying strap.

They're also thick and feel very solid. The metal bars and knobs which allow the length of the legs to be adjusted are robust and tighten the legs securely into place without damaging the finish of the wood. The bottom of each leg portion is also made of metal and has a foot rest, which allows the user to lengthen the legs without bending over to do it by hand.

The alt-az mount head is also very solid, though with a much different look that that of

the tripod legs. Like a few other alt-az heads I've seen lately, the Easy Touch uses a large center section that acts as an aluminum stabilizing bar.

This design works very well as it places much of the weight directly over the center of the mount. In fact, I prefer this design over most others I've used.

On one side of the Easy Touch mount there is a built-in holder to accommodate a Vixen-style dovetail plate. On the other side, there are numerous threaded holes which are designed to accommodate a variety of telescopes and plates. For my purpose, I installed a Losmandy-style plate there, also from William Optics. Two large tension knobs are provided for fine adjustment of the friction of the axes and there are even measured dial indicators for both axes. One thing the Easy Touch doesn't have is a handle for slewing the scope, though using the scope itself as a handle is as effective and very easy to get used to.

Since many may choose to mount two difAstronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

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THE WILLIAMS OPTICS EASY TOUCH ALT-AZ MOUNT

ferent scopes on the Easy Touch at the same time, there are Allen screws to adjust where the second scope is pointed relative to the other scope. This allows both scopes to be pre-

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cisely aligned with each other, which comes in handy when comparing the views with each scope, or if the second scope is to be used as a finder.

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70 Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

As for portability, the Easy Touch is light enough to be carried outside at a moment’s notice. In fact, I most often carried it outside with at least one scope mounted on top.

I mounted a variety of small refractors with the Easy Touch and it supported all very nicely. The mount’s weight capacity is rated at 20-25 pounds and my experience indicated that this range is probably about right.

Even with a substantial scope like the William Optics FLT 98 Triplet APO on one side, and nothing mounted on the other side, the mount still performed admirably despite the center of gravity issue presented by that arrangement.

It was also very solid carrying the FLT 98 with a William Optics ZenithStar 70 ED on the other side.

The Easy Touch even worked well for daytime use with my spotting scope. With the legs extended to three-fourths of their maximum length, vibrations were virtually nil. This arrangement placed the eyepiece height at five feet with the scope pointed horizontally, and with a bit of crouching I found this to also be a comfortable height for viewing most objects in the night sky. Of course, the legs can be adjusted to shorter lengths for “sit-down” viewing, or all the way up for a much higher eyepiece height. I found that extending the legs to within the last couple of inches of maximum length affected the stability a bit, but it was still more than acceptable with vibrations dampening in around three seconds with the substantial load of both the FLT 98 and ED 70 mounted on top.

The Easy Touch moved smoothly in each axis and, even at high magnifications, handtracking objects was very easy. There is absolutely no backlash in either axis, which is not always the case with lesser alt-az mounts. The Easy Touch simply gets out of the way and allows you to observe, which is really all that can be asked of any telescope mount.

Another thing I should note is that, although one was not provided with the particular mount that I tested, an eyepiece tray is available with the Easy Touch mount/tripod that attaches to the tripod leg spreader assembly. Personally, I don't care much for eyepiece trays as they most often become “dew trays” in-

THE WILLIAMS OPTICS EASY TOUCH ALT-AZ MOUNT stead. But I have often relied on them to help further stabilize tripod legs and the tray might have increased the already impressive stability of the tripod even more. However, since the mount is plenty solid enough without one, there’s little reason to quibble over the absence of a tray.

The only other potential issue worth mentioning is the look of the Easy Touch mount/tripod assembly. Personally, I like the “retro meets cutting edge” look and feel that the surveyor-style wooden tripod legs go well with the modern black, gold and clear finished, precision-machined metal alt-az head. However, some might prefer matching metal tripod legs, so it would be nice to see that option offered for the Easy Touch as well.

Of course, function is what really matters, and that's where the Easy Touch truly delivers.

At $499 it's not the least expensive alt-az mount on that market, but it is certainly among the best in its price range. It is solid, well built, and attractively priced. William Optics has a real winner in its Easy Touch ALT-AZ mount.

Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

71

ASTRO TIPS tips, tricks and novel solutions

An ATM Exit Pupil Gauge

By Barry Simon Measurement of the dark adapted exit pupil has been a discussion point for years, with various devices having been tried to facilitate measurement under dark skies (or maybe not so dark skies).

One of the better and easies methods has been use of Allen wrenches of varying diameter held close to the pupil with the diameter of the smallest wrench that totally occults a bright star representing a rough estimate of that of the dark adapted pupil. If you can see the star using the next smaller diameter, your pupil diameter is somewhere between the two. Of course, Allen wrenches are 6-sided, so diameter varies slightly depending on how it is oriented.

I’ve incorporated the basic Allen wrench technique into an easy to make and to use Exit Pupil Gauge (EPG), using various diameters of aluminum tubing readily avail-

Submit Your Astro Tip! Astronomy Technology Today regularly features tips, tricks, and other novel solutions. To submit your tip, trick, or novel solution, email the following information: • A Microsoft Word document detailing your tip, trick or novel solution.

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Please send your information to tips@astronomytechnologytoday.com

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Astronomy TECHNOLOGY TODAY

able from hobby shops. I use tubing diameters of 9/32 inch (7.14 mm), 1/4 inch (6.36 mm), 7/32 inch (5.56 mm), 3/16 inch (4.72 mm), 5/32 inch (3.97 mm), 1/8 inch (3.18 mm), 3/32 inch (2.38 mm), and 1/16 inch (1.59 mm). Each section of tubing will slide fairly tightly into the next larger size.

I cut 1-inch lengths from each tube and fit one into the other as shown in the accompanying photo of an assembled EPG that’s ready for painting. It has a finished total length of approximately 5 inches. The second through seventh tube sections each extend 5/8 inch (16 mm) from the larger section into which they are fitted. I fastened the seven tube sections with JB Weld, an epoxy like adhesive.

After completing an EPG, I prime it and apply a finish coat of Krylon Semi-Flat Black enamel to minimize reflections. After painting, the seven sections have final diameters of: 2.4 mm, 3.2 mm, 4.0 mm, 4.8 mm, 5.6 mm, 6.4 mm, and 7.2 mm.

Using the EPG To use the EPG under dark skies, locate a bright star (preferably Mag. 1 or 2) and hold the EPG by the narrow end close to or against the cheek below the eye you are testing. The upper end will likely be on or above your eyebrow with either the third (5.6-mm) or fourth (4.8-mm) section at eye level. Close your other eye and roll the EPG left or right in an effort to block the light of the target star. If you can still see the star despite rolling the tube section in front of your eye pupil, your pupil is larger than the diameter of that section of the EPG. Pull the EPG down to align the next larger tube section, roll it, and repeat until a section completely blocks the star. Your pupil diameter falls somewhere between the diameter of that tube section and that of the next smaller tube section.

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