One Giant Leap: Look before you leap in to astrophotograhpy by Tim Kerr of Hubert, NC 05/27/2008
Are you considering starting the adventure into the hobby of amateur backyard astronomy? If you are then you are in for a wonderful adventure. Now I ask you this; are you considering starting into this new hobby with the intention of jumping right into astrophotography to capture some nice pictures of what you see through a telescope without any idea of what to get or how to get started? If you are the please sit back, enjoy and read all this. If you are wanting to capture tho...Read More

 Telescopes, Mounts, Accessories and more by Tim Kerr of Hubert, NC 05/27/2008
Following is a description of the more common types of optical telescopes used by astronomers of all levels. I will be describing these telescopes along with some of their advantages and disadvantages. I will only be discussing optical telescopes since we are interested in seeing what is out there in the Universe. Purpose and Function of an Optical Telescope The design and purpose of the optical telescope is to gather light and bring that light to a point where it can be brought to focus fo...Read More

 Meade Autostar . Polar and GOTO Align for Imaging (Northern Hemisphere) by Vincent Trigili 10/15/2005
This method that I have learned is based on instructions originally given to me by Chris Hendren ( http://www.geocities.com/ex_cathedra_3/ ), who has gotten up to 5 minutes of unguided imaging with the LXD55 Mount and SN6. My SN10 will not likely ever reach that level, but I believe 1-2 minutes is reachable on most setups. I can already hit 30 seconds with out any trails and consistently get perfect GOTOs. This method is a bit time consuming, but the ...Read More

 Observing Technique, tips and tricks by Tim Kerr of Hubert, NC 10/15/2005
Many people are easily frustrated and discouraged when unable to find an object in the night sky.. There are reasons these objects are hard to find.. Although these objects are still within the grasp of the telescope you are using.. There are some tricks or techniques you can use that will help. First and most important is good dark skies with excellent atmospheric seeing conditions. Atmospheric conditions can often make observing hard. Conditions such as air turbulence at different levels of the...Read More

 GOTO for Newbies by Vincent Trigili 09/14/2005
This guide is intended to give people the basics of setting up a scope for reasonable GOTO.s and good enough tracking for visual work. This procedure may seem lengthy at first, but after you have been doing it a few nights, it should take less than 15 minutes to complete. This guide is based around my experience with a Meade LXD55 Schmidt-Newton 10. telescope, but this should work for most mass-produced GOTO scopes. The first thing is to train your drives. You should probably do this once a year. Not all...Read More