Jim’s Intro

Ever since walking the sands of Seven Mile beach in New Jersey as a teenager I have loved looking at the night sky. A friend showed me the moon and planets from his 4” table top scope. I remember seeing  comets from the dark pine lands forests.  After moving to the dark skies of South Dakota I did some primitive astrophotography with a camera, spotting scope and some zoom lenses. My interests originally were for visual observing but my eyesight and ignorance of the heavens soon led me to EAA and GOTOs. That is Electronic Assisted Astronomy and computerized “GoTo” telescopes for finding objects. I have never been talented or patient enough to do the astrophotography like my fellow amateurs produce. As you will see in my blogs I progressed from digital cameras and birdwatching scopes to to larger and more sophisticated gear. I have also enjoyed the gadgetry of telescopes, computers and remote controlled mounts. EAA allows me to see and record the skies in near real time and natural color. Traditional astrophotography requires 30 minute or more exposures and hours of processing afterwards. The following blog describes the different processes I have tried. MY BLOG:  https://sdbhas.org/blogs/members/jimg-blog/  

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Jim’s Blog History

  My Blog 11/1/2014 I found an auction sale and purchased a Meade 10” LX200. It came with a tripod and many camera accessories. Lacking a dedicated astronomical camera I started with visual observing and a Nikon D5300 DSLR. 2015 – 2016 9/2015  Prior to my Meade purchase I did some moonshots with a Nikon birding field scope. I also made a couple attempts with my Nikon and a telephoto 70-300mm zoom lens. I found alignment, focus and the field of view to be difficult. The Meade came with camera accessaries for Eyepiece Projection and Prime Focus which I decided to try. With Prime Focus your camera body attaches directly to the scope with no intervening lens. The scope then becomes your camera lens. To do eyepiece projection you place a device over the scope eyepiece which holds the camera body. Both methods work well but require quite a bit of fiddlin Prime Focus cannot be magnified but Eyepiece Projection depends on the focal length of the eyepiece for magnification .Screen Recording 2020-12-19 at 12.01.22 AM Click to play this 1 minute movie done with live analog frame averaging . I next tried analog video with surveillance cameras then one called Revolution2. The video can be output to any analog TV. The signal can be edited with software built into the camera. The cameras also do rudimentary stacking called “averaging”. This method enhances DSOs or planets with a small 1/3” color chip. The image will go from invisible to full color…

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