Equipment

A review of Stellarium has long been overdue… since I use it to plan all my astrophotography sessions. Stellarium is a rich feautered planetarium app with a very realistic sky, available for Windows, MacOS or Linux and it’s free! I use it frequently for searching new objects for photography. It’s fun! If you want use Stellarium to plan your sessions […]

Finally, today my EOS 70D was astro modified by DSLR Astrotec. I choosed the basic modification (H-Alpha sensitivity 80-85%). I was so dissapointed about my last picture of the Flaming Star Nebula (400mm f/5.6 compared to my last year image of the Flaming Star Nebula at 200mm f/3.5), so I decided to modify my 70D. […]

I got it. The Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L. Here is my little story, why I buyed this lens. Starting with auto guiding resulted in 100% sub utilization. I could go more than 3 x longer exposure time like before without guiding. So, more focal lenght would be cool 🙂 In other words, I want go to the limit of […]

Here is my new wide field lens. The Canon EF-S 24mm f/2.8. It’s sharpness and value at that low price was rated very positive in various reviews so I decided to complete my lens collection with this little thing. Unfortunately the night sky is not very clear at the moment so I did a few test shots […]

My new DSLR 🙂 After a year using the 100D I was looking for an update… The decision was hard. Full frame or again APS-C… Finally my decision goes to APS-C. With it, I still can use all my lenses, the remote controller (same model für 100D/70D), the Astronomik CLS Clip Filter and the most important […]

Finally, I got my Bahtinov mask 🙂 Hopefully it will fulfill my expectations… The mask has a pattern wich generates spikes around a (bright!) star. This helps reach good focus. If the spikes are centered, the star is in focus.  

So, I’m prepared for the Mercury transit in May (2016). Used foil: Baader Solar Filter OD 5.0. Hopefully it will be a clear view to watch and record the transit with the Skywatcher Explorer 130P…

I was looking for a 1.4x teleconverter for my canon lenses. Finally, the Kenko C-AF 1.4x MC4 was very interesting. Due to it’s construction you can use it with almost every EF lens from Canon. So, the plan was to extend my lenses to 70mm f/2.0 (EF 50mm f/1.4), 140mm f/4.0 (EF 100mm f/2.8) and 280mm […]