Delta II Rocket Spotted from Orange County

I’ve always wanted to see the shuttle lift off in Florida, but that will probably never happen.  So this year I’ve been trying to spot a rocket launch here in California.
As you may know Vandenberg AFB is home to NASA’s west coast launch pad. And according to Brian Webb’s website www.spacearchive.info we should be able [...]

Tripod Pads

Have you ever gone out to a campground out in the desert to image or do some visuals?  Or how about an access road out in the middle of nowhere to get away from light polluted skies?  If you’re one such individual then you know that some of the best locations have the worst foundations [...]

CCD Cameras and Frost

A couple of years ago after owning my SBIG ST2000-XCM camera for about 10 months, I ran into a situation that puzzled me.  I was at Anza and started imaging M42 so I decided to start with 5 minute subs.  The first shot looked pretty good.  No field of view rotation, guiding looked good, in [...]

Finderscope turned Guidescope

Last weekend I went out to do some imaging and was having problems with my guidescope.
I used a super long 60mm Tasco with a webcam mounted to it. It worked okay, but it wasn’t working so great with the clouds, and it did not help that I was imaging near the zenith. That meant that the [...]

Pictures longer than 30 seconds

Someone just asked, “can I take exposures longer than 30 sec. using my Nikon DLSR?”
The answer is yes. You can take exposures much longer than 30 sec. but you have to do it manually. Set your Nikon DSLR (D40, D50, D60, D70, D80, D90) to manual (M) or shutter priority (S) and move your shutter [...]

Astrophography with a 1 1/4″ focuser

If you are like me, you are amazed by all the wonderful photos people are getting with their telescopes. Yes it does take a while and is not easy, but there are things you can do to try it out. We’ll focus on the types of astrophotography you can do with a  telescope that has [...]

How to Get Started In Astronomy

What can you really see when you look through a telescope? We’ve all seen the amazing Hubble photos showing the Pillars of Creation and all their magnificent colors. There are also photos of galaxies and their amazing spiral arm structure.
Can you see colors in the night sky? Not really. There are a couple of things [...]

Celestron Omni XLT 150 Setup and Collimation

When I first got the Celestron Omni XLT 150 I was not clear on how to set things up. Here’s a video I made that will help clear up some things.
I show how to setup, balance and collimate this scope using a Baader Laser Collimator.