When I gaze up into the night sky, choosing the most beautiful object to watch or image is not easy: Planets, galaxies, different types of nebulae, we can even see a quasar, although it just looks like just a speck in space. But most of all, my eyes turn to the Moon, our Moon. It…

Yes indeed, these basic age-old tools are still essential for an astronomer today. Especially if you like myself have to build-up and break-down your setup for every night out. This is not applicable to all telescope though: Astronomers that opted to not use a tripod and stabalized a fix mounting point in their garden or…

I addressed how barlows and focal reducers work in my post on focal length. Summarizing, they allow changing the otherwise fixed focal length of a telescope, which has an impact on magnification and or field of view. Why would you want one a barlow There are multiple reasons why you would want to have a…

The mirrors in a reflector are not attached to the telescope like the lenses of a refractor. They can and will move around slightly over time. This results in blurry images. Having the mirrors perfectly aligned is therefore of the upmost importance. Collimation is the process of aligning the telescope mirrors. Unlike refractors, reflectors need…

So you chose a motorized mount or you have other equipment that requires power and does not come with an integrated battery, then you need to figure out how to power your equipment. I am no electrician!Please talk to a professional before deciding upon what battery would suit you best! Power Plugs Let’s start by…

Telescopes have such a big magnification that it is very hard to point them directly to a specific point in the night sky. The field of view is just too small. Point your telescope up anywhere you want and when you look through the eyepiece, you’ll just see a bunch of random stars and will…

Obviously, astronomy is a hobby that we practice outside and at night. So how do we get around in the dark? With a little light of course. And the easiest type of lamp to use is a headlamp. It keeps our hands free to operate the equipment, and we can point the lamp where we…

Polar aligning a telescope mount, is not difficult once you know what you are doing, but it is a very annoying task. It requires us to kneel, sit or lay down on the ground in order to be able to look through the polar finder scope. I am rather tall, and not that flexible. That…

Eyepieces are small lenses that need to be attached to telescopes in order to see the generated image. They have two important characteristics that determine directly the performance of a telescope: The eyepiece focal length combined with the telescope effective focal length determines the magnification the telescope generates.The eyepiece apparent field of view is the…