Astronomy

Finally some good weather. Thursday, 6/17/2/21 I had a chance to get out and do some astrophotography. Since I have a relatively small telescope and live in an area with a decent amount of light pollution, I decided the target would be IC5070, the Pelican Nebula. At this time of year Earth is facing away from the center of the galaxy during the night so the targets are limited; mostly consisting of galaxies. Even though the galaxies are massive, the distance from Earth makes them relatively small and without a decent size telescope the images you can produce of them are not too impressive. On top of that light pollution makes them difficult to shoot. Nebulas, on the other hand, …

This process applies to Sky-Watcher HEQ-5 and EQ6-R mounts but should work with other mounts with slight modifications to the procedure.   Why do we need to Polar Align Since the Earth is constantly spinning around the celestial north pole, the stars will appear to move around that pole during the night.  (It’s actually the Earth that’s moving but from our perspective it appears that stars are moving.)Polar alignment is the process of aligning the RA axis of our telescope mount with the celestial north pole so that when the motor moves our telescope around the RA axis throughout the night, it will track the stars properly. The above diagram shows the celestial north pole and the movement of a …