The big problem with doing astronomical photography is that if it’s too cloudy, you’re pretty much out of luck.
The other, not quite so big problem, is that an equatorial mount is a kind of arcane looking device. Lots of dials, lots of knobs and gauges. And if you’ve never used one before, it’s not an easy thing to figure out from scratch. Consider this a very basic primer.
Tagged Personal Blather
So! We’re up North and visiting the folks. There’s a couple tons of photos from the drive up that My Wife will be posting in time, and while we’re up here I’m going to be doing some experimentation with astronomical photography using tips from the Astronomy Magazine website. I’ve got the old Yashika J-7 SLR set up with a clock-drive equatorial mount to try doing long-exposure shots with minimal trails. We’ll have to see how that works out.
I’ve also got the old Ansco Karomat up here. It’s loaded with an ancient roll of high contrast Kodak Rapid Process Copy film. It seemed like an interesting experiment to mix a camera from the 1950’s with some film manufactured some time in the mid 70’s.
Tagged Personal Blather