OBSERVATORY & EQUIPMENT
Observatory
Well… that is the result after negotiations with my wife Silvina. Actually more than an observatory is just a site with a Pier at the border of the swimming pool in my backyard. Although the location is a bit risky, it is a convenient place for the rig.
The pier is placed directly in the basement. There are a bunch of people who used to build a block of cement below undergraound, that was tIMAGE
ELASTIC STRINGS FOR GENERATING SPIKES
My first attempts in astrophotography were done with a Synta 6 inch Newtonian and a Canon 300D. Since then, I've been hooked with reflectors because its simplicity, ease of use and price. A nice feature these OTA tube offers, are the spikes reflected in the stars due the spider that holds the secondary mirror.
Well… form the esthetical perspective I stared to miss it when I used the Celestron SCT After some thoughts I realized that the best way for my set up was to use thin (approximately 2mm wide) elastic bands. Other astrophotographers use simple strings; however elastic bands give a tight straight line in the image.
In addition the spikes are quite useful at the time of starting with the focusing process. The focusing process starts by acquiring snap shots with Astro Art. Once the star appears to be in focus the spikes begin to be noticeable. In a first stage the spike appears split in two. After some adjustments the lines starts to merge into one. In the case of the Canon 20 Da the snaps shot to bright stars are downloaded with ImagesPlus. Camera File is set to JPEG format
