Astrophotography
A beginner’s record of nights at the telescope, and of building and changing the thing: what was seen, what was made, what went wrong.
Latest session, 18 October 2026
A new corner of the garden, and the first night I slept through
A fight with focus, polar alignment with a broken bolt, the Andromeda patrol, a stalling motor that left the telescope staring at the house, and then the first night the telescope carried on by itself while I slept: Triangulum, M37, the Crab Nebula and Bode's Galaxy.
Every entry
October 2026
A new corner of the garden, and the first night I slept through
Mapping the garden, and finding home
M31 · 68 frames · 18 min · stars 6.3″
The focuser focuses itself, and the Triangulum Galaxy through a gap in the cloud
M33 · 145 frames · 24 min · stars 6.1″
Andromeda from both sides of the sky, the Pleiades and Saturn
M31 · 358 frames · 1 h 35 min · stars 6.4″
A motor focuser for £30
A small stepper motor, an Arduino Nano and a printed bracket now turn the focuser from the laptop. Getting the shafts in line was the hard part.
Motor focuser fitted, replacing focusing by hand
Polar alignment, Andromeda, and half an hour pointed at a tree
M31 · 120 frames · 30 min · stars 7.9″
First light: the Ring and the Dumbbell
M27 · 82 frames · 1 min 22 s
Claude, you are hooked up to a telescope
I bought a motorised mount, put a laptop outside beside it and told an AI to drive it. By midnight it had found the Ring Nebula.
Targets
Ring Nebula
1 night
Dumbbell Nebula
1 night · 1 min 22 s in total
Andromeda Galaxy
4 nights · 3 h 0 min in total
Pleiades
1 night · 21 min in total
Saturn
1 night
Triangulum Galaxy
1 night · 24 min in total
North America Nebula
1 night · 34 min in total
All targets · Messier checklist: 5 of 110 photographed so far.
The kit and the driver
Sky-Watcher 150P, Sky-Watcher EQ3 Pro GoTo, Altair Hypercam 183C, Laptop beside the tripod, Webcam on the telescope, Motor focuser. Driver: Claude, an AI.
| Telescope | Sky-Watcher 150P, a 150 mm Newtonian |
| Mount | Sky-Watcher EQ3 Pro GoTo with a SynScan handset |
| Camera | Altair Hypercam 183C (colour), on loan from a friend |
| Where | A back garden in Northern Ireland |
| Software | telescopeyoke, on a laptop beside the telescope |
| Driver | Claude, an AI. How that came about |