Autoguiding has revolutionised astrophotography. While your main imaging camera is off doing its job, a second camera keeps an eye on a star – any star – in the telescope’s field. If your mount begins to drift off target, the computer that’s looking through this second camera notices straight away. The computer then sends a...

Most of you already know that Sidereal Trading is the home of Astroworx, the only telescope factory in Australia. Over the past few years, we’ve been making Newtonian astrographs, developing and refining the design and improving performance. The telescopes Diego has been producing have, until now, been prototypes, rather than a production model. Diego, being...

Macrophotography is the art of getting images of tiny subjects onto a camera sensor. I’ve been asked about getting started in macrophotography, and specifically the least expensive way of getting your first image with the WeMacro Rail. This blog shows you how to go out and get your first image, so I’m going to get down to basics.

One of the things we like about getting images is they can tell stories so well. In the case of astrophotography you can literally see the development of a solar system or the birth (or the death) of a star. At the Australian Photographic Prize, I talked about macrophotography with other photographers, and it’s remarkably similar. 

With a dome, you can simply open it up and begin imaging. But if you want to sleep as well, you need something keeping an eye on the weather so the dome will close if it’s about to rain. In this blog I’ve described a couple of gadgets that can do all that for you. I also talk about a couple of options to put the system together.

Have you noticed that some astrophotographs have diffraction spikes coming from bright stars? They’re caused by the secondary mirror holder in reflector telescopes. Spiders, as they’re known, can give you nice spikes, but if they’re crooked or uneven, the spikes can look horrible. Here, I’ll show you how to get perfect spikes.