This year is what probably you should call the Year of Astronomy. We are going to have three lunar eclipses, two solar eclipses (and one of them being a hybrid solar eclipse; an eclipse that appears as a total eclipse to some areas and an annular eclipse to other areas), three comets and Saturn at the closest to Earth. If ...

Probably about an year or so back, I tried to capture Saturn. It didn't work out well because there was a collimation error in the telescope; Saturn turned out like two saucers placed face to face.Last week, when I visited a national park, I decided to try it once more, this time with the Samyang 500mm Mirror Lens. This also ...

Today is the first day of the new year according to the traditions in Sri Lanka (or rather the traditions of Buddhists and Hindus in Sri Lanka). I personally find the traditional new year in SL interesting as unlike many traditions around the world where the new year begins with a new day, it begins at a particular time of ...

Whenever I tell that I am interested in astronomy, there are some who come back with "Oh god! Don't tell me you don't believe in all that crap?". Sometimes I answer with a very serious "Well those are true!". The reality is that while there is a reasonable number of people who don't distinguish between astronomy and astrology, there is ...

Jupiter and Galilean Moons - From top to bottom: Europa, Io, Callisto and GanymedeI am not some one who is very sentimental, but I can't stop going back to the times that I was about 13-14 years old when I look at this picture.Back in around 1994-95 I constructed a telescope using nothing more than a lens of dad's old ...

While trying to find a possible location to spot the comet PANSTARRS (C/2011 L4), an interesting question came up. Would we actually get a better (and by better I mean practically better) chance of viewing if we were on a rooftop? Given that the comet is between 5-10 degrees above the Sun, there is only a small viewing window. How ...

I'm pretty sure quite a lot of us have seen moving stars. No these are not shooting stars, these are much slower and are reasonably bright. These are man-made satellites.Thanks to a tip-off from my dad (he's an avid reader of a local science magazine), I knew for a while that the International Space Station (ISS) is visible to naked ...

So yeah, managed to mend it DIY way, it does not look so great but well it still works.So here's what happened:I was trying to shoot Sirius around mid night and was dead tired. Was scrambling around half a sleep and toppled the telescope over. Had this been on grass, this would've been fine but it fell over and hit ...

Like my last post says, I went through an unfortunate incident of breaking the mount of my Celestron 114EQ. Thankfully I had the Samyang Mirror Lens to play with. Here is a photo of Jupiter made with the mirror lens:Jupiter - Stack of 10 images 1/80 shutter at 800ISO.Taken by Samyang 500mm f8.0 with a 2x converter.The photo is not ...

Well usually, you'd say it the other way around: Good news and bad news. But I have a lot more to say about the good news than the bad news.The bad news is that I toppled over the telescope and broke its mount. I still can't believe it, but yeah so that's how it went. I am thankful that the ...

Since any celestial photography is out due to the rains, I thought I might as well capture that.All photos were taken with a Canon 18-55mm (at 18mm) and a Canon 550D. The first photo has an exposure time of 15s and all others are with an exposure time of 30s. The photos have been post-processed for contrast and exposure.

JupiterAbout a week and a half back, I was trying to capture the Geminids. Given the awful location I live, it was a complete no-joy. However, just scanning the skies, figured that Jupiter was actually visible and decided to have a shot at it.Photo above is a single shot of Jupiter with Canon 550D, prime-focus on a Celestron 114EQ with ...

Lovers Under the Starlit Nights - Captured at Dutch Fort, Galle, Sri Lanka. The background is the Milkyway across Scorpius and Sagittarius.

About two weeks ago I finally got my hands on the motor drive for my Astromaster 114EQ. I was debating whether I really need it or not and finally decided to just go for it. And over the weekend I had it installed and tested.To start off with, the motor drive arrived with minimal instructions. But that wasn't really a ...

As usual my sense of timing seems to be impeccable, I decided experiment with image stacking for deep space imagery when the monsoons are about to start. Ever since I made the decision, it's either been raining or completely overcast. I even had some difficulty in trying to do solar photography.Luck turned my side when I went on a trip ...

For about a month's time, I wasn't able to do anything interesting on astrophotography owing to the bad weather. I started some experimentation on solar photography and well that is not going that well either. However, last week I managed to snap some decent pics of the moon. For the longest time I thought that lunar photos do not need ...

In the last post, I wrote about what is collimation and what sort of an effect a non-collimated telescope has on imaging. Taking it from there, let's see what are the equipment we can use in collimating a telescope.No-Tools:Firstly let's ask the question whether we can collimate a telescope without almost any tool. It is possible for someone with real ...

For any reflecting telescope, collimation of the optics is one of the most important and regular tasks. Collimation simply refers to aligning the primary mirror and the secondary mirror along with the eye-piece. However, the job it self is not that simple.If a telescope is not collimated, the image it creates would not be in the same plane as the ...

We are going through the monsoon season again, and well needless to say, not a very great period for astrophotography. Had somewhat of a clear sky today and decided to snap some quick photos and stack them using Deep Sky Stacker.Crux - The Southern CrossIn the image above, in the thumbnail view, the main stars of crux is quite obvious. ...

With all the preparation yesterday and day before, I was quite hopeful that I could get a few decent shots of the transit. I was specifically planning for one good shot through the telescope and a time-lapse shot of the transit across the solar disc. So imagine my delight when I work up today morning and found this greeting me:So ...