Misc Gear Posts

I need a telescope for the 4th pier of my new observatory! So, what kind of scope platform should I put together? I decided on a Galaxy Scope. This blog shares my thoughts on how to put this together - and it might just help you as well!

I just moved to a new house that will allow me to finally build the observatory that I have been wanting - and in the process, I ended up having a new large space where I could set up my office. So I used this unexpected opportunity to build my Dream Astrophotography Man Cave! See what I did and how it came together. Maybe you will find a few ideas for your own workspace!

As you assemble and evolve your telescope platform, you can expect to have to deal with routing cables to feed power and USB connection. It’s easy to end up with a rat’s nest of cabling that can have a negative impact on your imaging. With this post, I share how I deal with this problem. Hopefully, it will give you some ideas as your wrestle with your cabling challenges.

I have a powerful desktop computer that I custom-built expressly for Pixinsight image processing. However, I have been spending extended periods out of town and wanted to have a smaller form-factor computer for travel that was just as powerful. This post discusses that built.

Running three telescope platforms at the same time can generate a lot of data. Processing that data with the some of the sophisticated algorithms used by Pixinsight can make great demands on your computer. In response to this, I built a new computer that would be better optimized for Astro image processing and storage and networking strategy that would handle the workflows, data loads, and demands of astrophotography.

When you are running three astrophotography telescopes in the driveway at the same time, you have a lot of gear that has to be moved into position - plus I needed a place for the laptops that control my scopes. I built this Astro Cart and computer desk to help me deal with that. A very simple and useful project!