Month: July 2008

Well, in the past couple of days I got both a pleasant surprise and a bit of a let-down. First, I discovered that sometime in the past year or two, the gphoto2 folks have been very busy with Canon DSLRs. They’re reasonably well supported (in spite of what appears to be a lack of any …

Canon DSLR and LinuxRead More

I reassembled the wiring harnesses for my equipment along more functional lines. I had put things together by type of connection which was pretty silly in hindsight. So now I have two four-cable harnesses for each Canon 350D (one DC power line, one serial line for the shutter release, one USB connection, and one heater …

Getting Ready for Summer Star PartyRead More

Despite the full moon, I got out with my AstroTrac, modified Canon 350D and Borg 45ED. With the light-polluted skies of NYC, I put a Lumicon H-alpha filter on and shot as low as ISO 100 in order to test with 5-minute exposures. The conclusion?

Well, I managed to get out and use my AstroTrac under reasonably dark skies just north of Cape Girardeau on the night of July 13/14. The moon didn’t set behind the hills until around 1:30 am, but I shot across the sky from it at M31 using my Borg 45ED. I used the laptop for …

Disappointing AstroTrac First UseRead More

Well, Richard Taylor of AstroTrac got my polar alignment scope back to me before we left on vacation. Alas, the new scope has the same image scale problem as the old which makes it a bit difficult to align. Not impossible by any means, just more difficult. So I packed everything up and carried it …

AstroTrac and CanonRead More