astroaf

New Video Published!
Player One Xena 585M - My First Light Experience!
https://youtu.be/2lI7b9DMGok

Astrophotography guiding changed for me the night I replaced my long-time guide camera with the Player One Xena 585M. Same mount. Same telescope. Same focal length. Same sky. The only variable that changed was the guide camera — and the results completely reset my expectations.

In this video I share my real-world first guiding session using the Player One Astronomy Xena 585M on an HEQ5 Pro with an EdgeHD 8 at 1440mm focal length. This is practical astrophotography — not lab testing, not synthetic comparisons — just actual imaging conditions, PHD2 calibration, live guiding graphs, and star performance.

Cheers!
Doug

Player One Xena 585M product page:
https://player-one-astronomy.com/product/xena-585m-usb3-0-mono-camera-imx585/

Player One Astronomy Dwarf Planet guiding camera lineup:
https://player-one-astronomy.com/guiding-camera/

1.25 Inch Parfocal Rings Set of Three:
https://amzn.to/3ZHoMt5

m

Xena 585M: Your Pilot to Sub-Arcsecond Guiding Astrophotography guiding changed for me the night I replaced my long-time guide camera with the Player One Xena 585M. Same mount. Same telescope. Same focal ...

Hey Friends! New Video Published!
https://youtu.be/pUJI16hSdoE

Astrophotography isn’t just about collecting photons — it’s about listening to what your gear is already telling you. In this video, I take a data-driven look at polar alignment using logs that NINA already generates, and show how those logs can reveal real, measurable behavior in a pier-mounted astrophotography system over time.

This started as simple curiosity: how far off is my polar alignment at the start of each session, how much correction is actually required, and which axis is really doing the work — altitude or azimuth? Like many imagers, I had strong assumptions based on feel and ergonomics. The data told a very different story.

Using NINA’s TPPA (Three Point Polar Alignment) plugin, I enabled session logging and wrote a small Python script to extract only the meaningful states: where alignment started, where it finished, and how much effort it took to get there. From that, I built a repeatable workflow that turns polar alignment into something measurable instead of subjective.

Cheers!
Doug

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Astrophotography Gear Is Whispering | Are You Listening? Astrophotography isn’t just about collecting photons — it’s about listening to what your gear is already telling you. In this video, I take a data-driven loo...

The Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33)
One of the most iconic dark nebulae in the night sky, the Horsehead was first identified in 1888 by Williamina Fleming on photographic plates at Harvard. It lies about 1,375 light-years away in the constellation Orion, silhouetted against the glowing hydrogen emission of IC 434.

This image was captured under a bright Moon, which meant no detectable O III signal
in my framing. Rather than force it, I worked with the data I did have and created a synthetic blue channel derived from H-alpha, letting the structure and contrast of the Horsehead take center stage.

Integration
H-alpha: 8 × 900s — 2h
S II: 6 × 900s — 1h 30m
Total integration: 3h 30m

Gear
Celestron EdgeHD 8 @ 1440 mm
Player One Astronomy Artemis-M Pro
Astroasis Oasis focuser & filter wheel
Svbony SHO filters
Sky-Watcher USA HEQ5 Pro

Processed in PixInsight

Cheers!
Doug

Orion Nebula (M42 & Running Man)
A stellar nursery carved out of a vast molecular cloud ~1,350 light-years away in the constellation Orion.

What looks like an “explosion” is actually a blister nebula — intense UV radiation from the Trapezium stars ionizing gas and pushing outward where the surrounding cloud is thinnest. The dark lanes are dense dust still resisting that pressure, sculpting the nebula’s dramatic shape. New stars are forming here right now, even as radiation erodes the cloud around them.

This region has been observed since antiquity and cataloged by Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc in 1610, but modern narrowband imaging reveals just how dynamic and layered it really is.

Integration
H-alpha: 6 × 900s — 1h 30m
O III: 8 × 900s — 2h 00m
S II: 7 × 900s — 1h 45m
Total integration: 5h 15m

Gear
Celestron EdgeHD 8 @ 1440mm
Player One Astronomy Artemis-M Pro
Astroasis Oasis Focuser and Filter Wheel
Svbony SHO
Sky-Watcher USA HEQ5 Pro

Processed in PixInsight

, , , , , , , , , , ,