Sampling rates can make your stars good or blocky, especially if you zoom in. It all depends on a few factors like your focal length, the size of the pixels in your sensor, how good the atmospheric conditions are, and even how good your guiding is. This article shows how to get a combination of telescope and camera that will give you nice smooth stars under a range of conditions.

This is an instalment of a tutorial series on how to slave a dome. In this part we look at connecting the dome control software to the dome and mount through the ASCOM Hub. Depending on the connections you can perform the slaving calculations in the dome control software or the ASCOM Hub.

In this second part of the dome slaving series, we discuss connecting your observatory control program directly to the dome and the mount using ASCOM drivers. This is the simplest we to set it up, and allows you to use the observatory control program to do the slaving calculations.

If you have a computerised observatory, you might know about dome slaving, the process of keeping the shutter on the dome right in front of the telescope. Not only is there a lot of mathematics in this, but also it’s a complicated task to set up the different components of your system. This is the first article in a series on different ways to do this.

PegasusAstro focus, power and dew heater controllers use a range of temperature and environmental sensors. Knowing which one goes with what product can be confusing. Bill’s written a handy list for you.

Every month, I present a talk at the Astronomical Society of Victoria on what’s up in the sky. They’re uploaded to YouTube and a few other video sites, and I talk about what visual observers can see at this time of year, what astrophotographers can image, as well as other things. One of the regular…