Astrophotography

Sky-Watcher has developed a new astrophotography telescope to add to their already impressive range.  This time it’s a Newtonian reflector that in true Newtonian design, uses two mirrors (a large primary and smaller, angled secondary mirror) to direct light towards the eyepiece or camera.

A few nights after unboxing, I set the scope up and attached my Canon 60Da DSLR to capture a quick test shot of the moon.  I was suitably impressed with the crisp view through the laptop screen and great, wide-field image that resulted from the test shot (note: I added a starry background for extra effect and the image above was the result).

As luck would have it, the “astronomers curse” then took effect and poor weather conditions rolled in that literally persisted for months until November 2023 when I was afforded an opportunity to point the telescope at a couple of deep sky objects to gauge how the scope performs under the night sky.  More on that in a bit…