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Issue #531: The SCT Now
Wow! A magazine just for users of Schmidt Cassegrain Telescopes? Is it for real? No, it ain’t for real. I made it up out of whole cloth the other morning. Could such a magazine come to be, though?...
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Issue #532: Astrophotography with Inexpensive German Equatorial Mounts
Can you? Should you? You can and you might want to for several reasons. Will it ever be as easy taking pictures with a 500 – 1000 dollar GEM as with a 10,000 dollar telescope mount? No. Not always,...
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Issue #533: A New Way to Polar Align
If you are using an equatorial mount, fork or German equatorial, for imaging, that mount has to be accurately polar aligned. The right ascension axis has to be pointed precisely at the North Celestial...
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Issue #534: Getting Your PHD
PHD2, that is, as in America’s premier auto-guiding software. I have written about the program, originally done by software wizard Craig Stark and now carried on as an open-source project, a time or...
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Issue #535: The Final Piece of the Puzzle
In our pre-spring observing season drive to get novices (and maybe even a few not-so-novices) set up with a rig for deep sky imaging, we’ve addressed mounts, telescopes, and, last week, auto-guiding...
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Issue #536: Deep Sky Imaging in Seven Easy (Sorta) Steps
All those cables!We’ve spent the last several weeks setting you up with a telescope, mount, camera, and guide system. Now it is finally time to get outside with all that gear (assuming you, unlike me,...
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Issue #537: The Novice Files: Star Charts Part I
When we last left off with the Novice Files, we’d talked about stars, constellations, and catalogs of stars and deep space objects. This time we’ll be dipping a toe into the somewhat deep water of star...
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Issue #538: Is This the End?
Certainly not. The Blog from Chaos Manor South has been rolling along for ten years, and I have every intention of continuing it into the foreseeable future. B-U-T. For a number of reasons, I’m backing...
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Issue #539: Get Thee to the Dark Site Part I
Spring is here, and with it maybe some clear skies that will encourage you to get out to your club or personal dark site (we’ve had very little rain here, but almost constant clouds). Yes, I...
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Issue 540: Get Thee to a Dark Site II
Last ish we got you a dark site, or at least gave a few pointers as to how you and your fellow astronomy club members couldfind and keep one. This time, we’re going to talk about using that site. And...
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Issue #541: Taking Pictures with a C8
When I’m speaking about the history of Schmidt Cassegrains at star parties, club meetings, or cons, I often get puzzled looks and questions from new amateurs about one of the things I say: “One of the...
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Issue #542: The Curious Case of the Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope
As you may know, for years I was one of the leading proponents of the Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope (SCT), and am one of only two people to have ever written a (commercially published) book about the...
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Issue #543: My Yearly M13 (from the backyard…)
One of my traditions is that each year, sometime over the course of the summer, I take a picture of star cluster Messier 13. Why? Well, it’s tradition as Tevye said. But it also ensures I get out at...
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Issue #544: To PEC or not to PEC
Me and my trusty Ultima 8 PEC circa 1995...If you read the last installment of the good old Astro Blog, you know I am a proponent of shorter (60 – 120-second) sub-frame exposures for astrophotography....
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Issue #545: Good, Old EQ-6…
Actually, I could have called this issue “Lo, There Shall be an Ending”—Part II. If you’ve read the linked post, you know that for a number of reasons I been thinning out my telescope and mount herd. I...
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Issue #546: Two Down, One to Go...
And, so, my C11 OTA has been sold. I'm so happy it, like the Atlas, could go to a friend.One more then, my friends, one more, a CGEM mount. I have absolutely loved using this Celestron German...
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Issue #547: A Losmandy GM811G Comes to Chaos Manor South
Thanks to my recurring back problems I recently put my Celestron C11 Schmidt Cassegrain and my Atlas EQ-6 and CGEM mounts up for sale. If you are a Facebook friend of mine, you know all three went to...
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Issue #548: Astro-Video, Slight Return
I’m not talking about new-fangled video observing, “electronically assisted astronomy” as the denizens of a certain contentious forum on a famous (in a small amateur astronomy sort of way) website call...
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Issue #549: Using the Losmandy GM811 for Visual Observing
How do I like my new Losmandy GM811? That’s a question I’ve gotten a lot over the last few weeks. But what is the answer? Given the limited amount of time I’ve had to use the telescope mount, I can at...
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Issue #550: Deep South Star Gaze 2017: You Can’t Win ‘em All…
You can’t expect everystar party to be great. Sometimes, often through no fault of the event itself or its organizers, things just don’t quite pan out for you. So it was for me with the 2017 edition of...
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