There are some astrophotographers who have perfect dust free cameras that have identical sensitivity on every pixel. They have clinically clean filters fresh from a computer chip manufactures clean room. Their telescopes are high value apochromatic refractors with such large illuminated fields that you could hold a night-time sporting evening in the eyepiece holder.

These fortunate astronomers probably don't need to do flat fields.

All other astronomers (Which includes you and me) do need to take flats.

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There are a couple of planetry science missions that have become iconic of the skill our spacecraft engiiners can show if they choose. We all know about Voyager, but I think the Mars rovers are fast heading the same way.

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For years I've had an old LXD55 mount - most folks laugh when they hear about my mount - but I've made it do most of the things I want it to do. I've just dug up some comments I made in 2006 relating to periodic error that I'd like on the web, so i'll put them here.

They relate to a "magical" adjustment that I made to my mount that gave a large improvement to the autoguiding and tracking and periodic error of my LXD55 mount.

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Recently Don Goldman of Astrodon posted this interesting article on his website regarding the Baader Hydrogen Alpha filters.

Baader H-a Comparison

This highlights the differences between the expensive astrodons and inexpensive baaders. Don is claiming some IR leakage, and I have also heard reports of some leakage in the green. This have provoked some stern response from various quarters.

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I finally got fed up of my Fugi Finepix A120 and puchased a new camera. I've frequently found myself getting frustrated at not getting nice terrestial photos - I'm forever snapping pictures of things in the workshop, observatory, or when I'm out and about, and whilst the A120 has been super-reliable and a good performer, it was time to upgrade

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