Astronomy Fundamentals

Astrophotography began with film cameras mounted on telescopes. Then
the CCD camera allowed photographers to save digital files to computers
and process the images by stacking and editing for quality. This is still how
much astrophotography is done. But a new generation of chips and
software has allowed a revolutionary kind of “smart” telescope. These are
cameras within small telescopes that allow all functions, from go-to to
tracking to stacking to image processing, to take place within the small
body of the telescope. This has allowed even beginning amateurs to take
stunning photographs of deep sky objects, as well as the Sun and Moon.
For this month’s Fundamentals talk, members Mark Kipperman and Bill
Pardue will introduce one of these scopes, the ZWO Seestar, available in
30 mm and 50 mm models. They will show how easy they are to set up and
use the app to take excellent photos right out of the box, and at a
remarkably reasonable cost—even in light polluted skies.