Lyle Aldridge

The Tucson area, where I live, will be problematic. We now have roughly a million people in the metro area, spread out from Marana in the northwest to Vail in the southeast. Between those areas, ...

Excellent idea. If you get clear skies in Oklahoma, be sure to take full advantage if you can. You don't say when your trip is planned, but be aware that late summer is monsoon season here in the ...

Yes, there are several here who have such experience. I'm not one of them. But just in case none of them responds, I direct your attention to a tab labelled "Filter by Product" at the top of the ...

There's an explanation of how front-end "teleside converters" work in Roger's (rnclark) posts above. and a slightly more explanation here . You can't simplistically infer that a larger "objective" ...

Yep, Sunday might be OK. Saturday will be tough. Our club calls these "new moon weekends," with events at our dark sites over Friday and Saturday.  I guess that makes me forget that normal people ...

Do you have a tracking equatorial mount? If not, then your only target this weekend will be the sun. Even the moon won't be visible this weekend. I hope you have a good solar filter - and don't ...

I have no personal experience with either mount, but I think you will find much more information about both in the forum devoted entirely to mounts at cloudynights: https://www.cloudynights.com/for ...

I don't think most of us pay much attention to the brands of our adapters, and I only occasionally see posts from people complaining that some they bought from this source or that didn't quite fit ...

I confess, that's never occurred to me. But I'm doubtful. I also don't know what red dot you mean, since there is none in the live view of my own cameras. A very healthy amount of magnification is ...

I'm mostly a Newtonian user, and IMO, while precise collimation is important, its difficulty is grossly exaggerated. It does not require any special tools. All it actually requires is an eyepiece ...

There are perhaps some exceptions, but for most cameras and astro targets, manual focusing is absolutely essential. It requires a steady hand and a steady tripod. Lots of cheap tripods aren't up ...

Yep, you muffed the math a bit, but most AP newcomers do. You can't make light-gathering comparisons based just on the varying f-ratios of lenses with different focal lengths, which I think ...

I'm hesitant to ask, but your earlier post revealed that your images to that point had been hand-held, and I still haven't noticed any mention of a tripod in your posts. Also, your post in the ...

Definitely Arcturus. Beginners are taught to find and identify Arc turus by following the "arc" of the Big Dipper handle. It's a 1st magnitude star, much brighter than the Dipper stars, and made to ...

This seems to call for a wheel I'm not capable of inventing, much less re-inventing, but there are many discussions of the relative merits of those two cameras ready for your review on the cloudy ...

In case it's not clear from other responses, the "Minimum shutter speed" found in the DPR specifications is the maximum definite duration setting, without using the "bulb" function. What often ...

Unfortunately, whether color or monochrome will work better depends on what you're imaging. Monochrome sensors are more sensitive, but planetary imaging is generally best done with video, and ...

The closest approximation I've found so far in GIMP 2.10 is Filter>Distorts>Value Propogate, with the "Mode" set to "More Black." Following Rudy's tutorial and using that filter in place of ...

Rudy, thank you for preparing and sharing this great little tutorial. I've been trying for months to get that effect, pretty much using the very same PS functions. Without benefit of advice on the ...

Mostly, I just charge up several batteries for my Canon and Pentax DSLRs. As OllieN has already noted, a couple of DSLR batteries generally last through a long a session as I need. Recently, ...