Top tips to improve your viewing and astrophotography
John Axtell is an experienced astrophotographer with his CV including writing for the Sky at Night magazine and running nearby Astronomy groups. Even so, he is not adverse to cheap and cheerful hacks to improve his viewing and photography, often using rather surprising items. In our January meeting, he shared some of his top tips. Here are a few of them.
How about using the chains of a hanging basket to improve the stability of your tripod? Attach them to your tripod legs and add a heavy weight to them. This could be a large plastic milk container filled with water. The trick is to ensure that the weight is just touching the ground. Too high and it will swing around making matters worse. If it rests on the ground, it is not doing its job.
Tips for working in the dark : John suggested several options. You could use beta lights, available from a shop / website for fishing gear. It is also possible to buy glow in the dark tape to wrap round those small items which you put down and can then never find. Luminous tent pegs are helpful to mark out trip hazards, especially at a group observing event.
If you want to make a simple dew shield, John suggested a yoga map which can be easily formed into a cylinder and does the job.
Maintaining your dark adaptation is a major issue sometimes whether at home or at a group observing event. So, you are at home and you need to nip back indoors to fetch something. An eye patch over your observing eye will prevent that eye adapting to the brighter indoor light. If you wish to use your laptop outdoors, you can make a simple screen for it out of a red lighting gel filter sheet set into a cardboard frame to sit securely over the screen.
The general conclusion after hearing this talk is that there is no such thing as junk. Anything lurking in your garage could be put to good use!
Talk given by FAS member John Axtell
post by Katherine Rusbridge
Jan 2024