Instrumentation and Equipment

I went back and watched the AAVSO Webinar on using DSLRs and the presenter, Dr. Barbara Harris, talked about her experience using a Canon 400D (IIRC) and the 18-55mm zoom kit lens to take images of bright stars with no tracking.  I have some questions additional questions to ask anyone in the community who ever used camera lenses for photometric work.

Hi, folks,

The solar eclipse this weekend got me thinking:: does anyone know if it's possible to do solar observing with the eVscope or Stellina telescopes by putting a neutral density filter on the top of one of them?

Or as small telescopes with CMOS detectors, maybe they can even handle looking at the Sun.  I wouldn't want to try this without real assurance, but I'm wondering if anyone knows about that.

I will soon be receiving a Dwarf II telescope (see: https://dwarflab.com/products/dwarf-2-smart-telescope) to evaluate for variable star imaging.

1) If any reader has experience using this system, please reach out! Advice is welcome.

2) If readers would like to have certain variables imaged. Please send me your (hopefully short) list.

I'll post progress here, and will share FITS files with folks who use VPhot.

Peter

BPEC

I am considering the FLI KL400 for my exoplanet photometry work and I was wondering if anyone here has had any good or bad experiences with it that they would like to share.  Anything would be helpful.

Ed

I finally have my Skywatcher EQ6-R PRO mount.

Talking to some imaging contacts, they seem to think this mount is not up to a Celestron C11 for astrophotography.

However PEP with Optec SSP3 (with its 30s integrations) is of course more forgiving than AP.

Is there anyone out there who is doing PEP on this or similar Skywatcher mounts with a C11.

The spec does claim up to 20kg load for AP. C11 OTA is 12.5kg and SSP3 adds another 1.5kg from memory so it seems well within limits to me.

This is a project for you Astro Makers out there: Astronomers who like to make things to improve their observing experience.

The WeatherBox project is a sensor package that you can deploy near your observatory site and that can report back to you the local weather conditions. This report can be used to generate programmatically a safety signal when it is urgent that you close your observatory because of inclement weather.

Hi All, 

I'm new here. 

I live in a ~ Bortle 6/7 zone. When it comes to exposing in regard to light pollution, just how important is it to reduce thermal noise with cooling? It would seem that the shorter exposures for light pollution would obviate the need for cooling. 

ZWO (and some other manufacturers) have these nifty cameras that are not cooled. I wonder why they would put them on the market and to whom they're marketing.

Any comments are appreciated. 

Thanks - 

Tony  

Hi,

I have a brandnew QHY600 mono cmos camera and it's not working.

https://www.qhyccd.com/download/

The Stable Ver. 20220817   All-In-One Pack （Driver, SDK and Software) for WINDOWS   is not working.

Also, after the last Beta Ver. 20230509

Hello All,

To calculate photometric errors, AstroImageJ requires you (in Aperture Photometry Settings) to give it certain values, these are:

- CCD gain [e-/count]

- CCD readout noise [e-]

- CCD dark current per sec [e-/pix/sec]

I can easily get the precise estimate of the first value from the FITS Header (EGAIN keyword). However, I have some questions about the second and the third one.

I just received an email ad from Ricoh - the maker of Pentax cameras. 
 

The new K3 mark 3 will feature an APS - C  sensor WITHOUT a Bayer filter array!

DSLR observers should find this interesting- I’d buy one immediately, if I had the dollars. This could potentially eliminate the effects of star color with DSLR observations.