GFamily

Perseids too, don't forget; so widefield lenses on a fixed tripod is worth doing.

Well you can forget your doubts. He's doing 75 minute subs, just like I said.

Yes. Using a Ha filter.

That's good performance for a 300mm lens. A friend is getting good 75 minute unguided exposures with a 50mm lens.

I'll second the advice to just get an external intervalometer. My Pentax K5 has one built in, but setting it up is fiddly in the field, particularly if the camera's at an unhelpful angle. With an ...

To reiterate what I've said upstream - a lot of people of my acquaintance are very happy with the SA and are getting great results from it. I'm not denying that it didn't work for you, but I am ...

Yes, if you're using the L bracket, the open end of the polar scope is accessible; but if you're using a ball head straight on the SA it isn't.

I know a lot of people who would disagree with you about that.

I can't comment on the Ioptron tracker, but I've never had a problem polar aligning my Star Adventurer. Agreed, the illuminator isn't great, and doesn't work at all well with the L shaped ...

Relatively limited, yes; but bear in mind that it uses the descendant of the 40 year old K-mount, so you can use old glass, including some classic lenses (with more or less functionality of course).

I'd say it's most likely that you were looking at Vega - one of the 'Summer Triangle' stars. If you want to check what satellites might have been visible, you can use Heavens-Above.com, which is a ...

Without knowing where and when you took your image it's very hard to tell, but I'd say almost certainly not. I suspect (given the short exposure time and relatively slow f/ratio)  that you have ...

That should be 23h 56m 4.1s, the length of the Sidereal day. A relatively minor point, but important should you set your tracker to move at Solar rate rather than Sidereal. That's true for Northern ...

Not sure what you mean. The graph shows the change in altitude of Vega as it rises, culminates and sets as seen from Toronto. Check it out on Stellarium - or over a night's observing.

Afraid I'm not an Ontarian, I just set Stellarium to match your situation. I realised the 'altitude' plot was slightly out in my original image, so I've re-plotted it. The horizontal axis is hours ...

Also remember that you don't need a 'smart' lens, so you don't need Auto Focus Auto Aperture Image Stabilization You don't even need the same brand as your camera body - so you can look for old ...

Interestingly, I thought that, but I then plotted the altitude of Vega for Toronto every hour from rising to setting. Also plotted the rate of altitude change. Vega starts rising at about 5.5 ...

I was watching the NASA TV broadcast of the Eclipse. I was amused to see that the the telescope view from the Griffith Observatory was done with an equatorially mounted telescope. Well, it ...

A very quick unguided photo of this morning's conjunction. 1s exposure using a 102mm f/12.7 Mak and a Canon 1000d body at 1600 ISO. I look forward to seeing much more impressive images

If you have a built in intervalometer, you don't need a shutter release cable; however, it's worth knowing that an external intervalometer can be a lot easier to use than straining to reset your ...