Helpful Links and Resources
I wanted to include a growing and dynamic list of useful links and resources that I have found helpful for astronomy and astrophotography (and possibly other random or miscellaneous from time to time and topic to topic). I hope these resources are helpful for others as well! All sites and resources listed are free / no charge (at least for what I have used them for):
- Telescopius: Literally just about anything and everything you could want to find for astronomy and astrophotography planning and research.
- Photos, targets that are visible per time, date and location, target metadata, fantastic comprehensive 7 day weather outlook, etc.
- Stellarium: My personal preference for desktop PC and mobile phone planetarium software. This app can also be integrated / connected with your mount for telescope control.
- APT: The (free) and fantastic camera and mount control software I've been using thus far. It features an intuitive design, and is feature rich.
- 12dstring: Very helpful field of view (FOV) calculator with database containing several hundred cameras, telescopes, eyepieces, and sky targets to get a great idea about planning gear to photograph or view DSOs.
- CloudyNights: Robust, supportive, and information-rich online forum for astronomers and astrophotographers. Also features a classifieds section where great used astro-gear can be snagged for big discounts vs buying new. Great community for learning and sharing astronomy stories, photos, and knowledge.
- Deep Sky Stacker: Fantastic, powerful, and free application for stacking of raw images for post-processing.
- PHD2: Intuitive (as intuitive as it can be), powerful and free application for autoguiding to offer extended exposure times with high precision.
- Clearoutside: Another astronomy-centric website for extended forecast to include cloud cover forecasting by level.
- Light Vortex Astronomy ASCOM tutorial: For those looking for a good walkthrough on how to set up ASCOM / EQMOD to control their Equatorial mount through a planetarium app like Stellarium or Cartes du Ciel- this is a great one!
- Meade Schmidt Newtonian Collimation guides: These telescopes are unique beasts...reflectors with a corrective lens plate, large secondaries, and their own tricks for collimation. A few good guides can be found below:
- http://www.weasner.com/lxd/techtips/Ultimate_Collimation.pdf
- http://www.mikeblaber.org/sn10collimation.pdf
- https://www.cloudynights.com/articles/cat/articles/how-to/complete-collimation-of-the-meade-schmidt-newtonian-r1731