Keyword: motorized

The Moon not only is a stepping stone for humankind's exploration of the universe. The Moon also is a good stepping stone for your astrophotography and often the first distant target people shoot.

Observing stars becomes easier if you don't have to constantly make adjustments. This is even more important, if you want to make long-exposure photos of the sky. The solution is simple & elegant -- the Earth rotates around it's axis and if you counteract that rotation, you keep looking at the same position in the sky. There are different names for solutions to do that, most notably an "equatorial mount". Barndoor- and other star-tracking accessories all use the same principle and require the same preparation steps -- THE POLAR ALIGNMENT

A standardized image format is something most users take for granted -- JPG, GIF, PNG and even TIFF are household names when it comes to (web)-images & editing. If you use a dSLR, you have gotten used to adding a tool or two, to process the Nikon or Canon RAW formats. With the astronomy cameras, the formats & necessary conversions become a real mess -- especially if you use a one-shot color "OSC" camera.