Omegon APO 104/650 ED: these astrophotos show the beauty of space

January 30 2017, Marcus Schenk

We frequently receive beautiful photos of celestial objects from our customers. They are eager to show us, what they were able to achieve with their equipment. Very often we are over the moon, when we recognise the love of detail and the energy these astrophotographers have invested in these pictures.
Today we would like to present some very delightful astrophotos. The astrophotographer and filmmaker Sebastian Voltmer shows us beautiful impressions of space. These were taken, amongst others, with a Sony a7s and an ST-2000XM camera. The telescope used was a premium telescope: the Omegon apochromat 104/650 ED with field flattener.

The Heart Nebula IC1805

The name of this nebula refers to its special shape: a red heart in the night sky. You find this nebula between the constellations Cassiopeia, Perseus and Giraffe. The heart is located approx. 4° east of the star ε Cas. An open star cluster, which illuminates the nebula, is embedded in the middle of the emission nebula.

The Dumbbell Nebula M27

The Dumbbell Nebula M27 in the Vulpecula constellation is the second brightest planetary nebula and thus a beacon in the starry sky. The originator of this nebula at a distance of approx. 1400 light years is a white dwarf, a star that has reached the end of its life.

Pacman Nebula NGC 281

The names of some nebulae clearly demonstrate that astronomers have a vivid imagination. NGC 281 is also known under the name Pacman Nebula. If you still can remember the time of the Commodore 64 etc., you will surely also remember the computer game. And this nebula with its dark clouds starkly resembles Pac-Man. The nebula is 9500 light years away from us and contains the twin star Barnhard 1. With a strong telescope, we can discover its four companions.

Crescent Nebula NGC 6888

Crescent: a half-moon in the form of a nebula. NGC 6888 is also known under the name Sickle Nebula. It is located right in the middle of the Swan constellation, at a distance of approx. 2.5° from the central Swan star, Sadr. Despite its prominent position in summer, the Crescent Nebula is not easy to see because of its small size of 18×13’ and its brightness of 10 mag. Scientists assume that the nebula has been ejected by a Wolf-Rayet star in the later stages of its life. For successful observation you need a crystal clear sky and an OIII-Filter.

Solar flare

The picture gives you an impression of the size of a solar flare in comparison to Earth. This solar flare that appeared on the 15th of August 2016 had a length of approximately 13 Earths lined up.

Tags: telescope, Omegon, Apochromat
Posted in Observations »

Omegon Mini-Guidescope: Small Guidescopes for better astro photos

January 23 2017, Marcus Schenk

Times are changing: Everything is getting smaller. Also in photography! In the past one solely had to handle large and long Guidescopes in astro photography. The assembly of such equipment often was very inconvenient. With the new Omegon Mini Guidescopes tracking is considerably easier.

Finder and Guidescope: The 60 mm Omegon Microspeed Guidescope mounted on a telescope.

“A Guidescope is a telescope, which is mounted parallel on the main instrument. While the camera is mounted to the main telescope, the Guidescope is responsible for accurate tracking.”

Presentation: Guidescope types 50 and 60 from Omegon.

The Omegon Mini-Guidescopes are available with 50 mm and 60 mm diameter. They are only 200 mm and 260 mm long and with 600 and 900 gram they are almost as light as a 2″ eyepiece. What are the benefits when compared with “conventional” Guidescopes?

Lighter: Your telescope will not be overloaded. Even smaller telescopes will be suitable for astro photography.
• Simpler: Simply plug the Guidescope into the finder shoe. It is also simple to remove.
• Better focussing: Sensitive focussing with the helical focuser.

For further details please refer to the product pages for the 50 mm and 60 mm Mini-Guidescopes.

Autoguider and Guidescope: Are they an effective team?

This question can be answered with a clear: “Yes”. The Guidescope works optimally with an Autoguider. Why? Most modern Autoguiders have small pixels. This comes with a clear advantage: A shorter focal length of the Guidescope. Touptek Autoguiders, for instance, have such small pixels. Main feature: Due to the new sensor design these cameras are highly sensitive. This enables you to find,the right guide star for any object.

“With the Guidescope and my camera I always find a guide start in the field of view” says Bodo Fischer, astro photographer and user of the Guidescope.

The Guidescope with a Touptek camera

Which camera is suitable for Microspeed Guidescopes? Our recommendation: Touptek “GCMOS01200KPA” cameras. Highly suitable due to the high image rate of 30 images per second, a ST-4 Autoguider port for your mount and an image processing software.

The best combinations:

Tip: With the camera use a Omegon UV-IR-filter or the Baader Semi APO filter. For even more brilliant stars and even more success in Autoguiding.

Tags: Omegon, Guidescope, Telescope Accessories
Posted in New Products »

Celestron Astro Fi: beginner telescopes with App

January 16 2017, Stefan Taube

It all started with the NexStar Evolution: Celestron had this telescope series equipped with WIFI. This enables you to connect your tablet or smartphone with the telescope. This not only gives you the opportunity to control your telescope without cables, you can also utilize all functionalities of the free-of-charge App Celestron SkyPortal: Your display screen uses an appealing planetarium view to show the current view of the sky and provides you with a lot of background information. The most popular objects are available as images and even an Auto-Guide (in English).

Celestron now offers this technology also for reasonable starter telescopes. At present this series Astro Fi consists of four different instruments:

Newton telescope N 130/650 AZ GoTo Astro Fi 130

Refractor N 90/910 AZ GoTo Astro Fi 90

Maksutov telescope MC 102/1325 AZ GoTo Astro Fi 102

Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope SC 127/1250 AZ GoTo Astro Fi 5

Our tip: The Astro Fi telescope with SC optics.

The model Astro Fi 5 mentioned last is particularly interesting. With its aperture of 5 inches it is already relatively fast. However, the telescope is very compact and thus only has a minor leverage effect on the tripod. The closed tube protects the main mirror against contamination. Moreover, SC optics show a high adjustment stability. Despite their compact design and the high focal length, SC optics are highly suitable for taking photos of moon and planets – a well suited camera is the NexImage 5.

As already described before, all four Astro Fi telescopes generate a WIFI for the control via the SkyPortal App. In contrast to the NexStar Evolution, Celestron delivers the Astro Fi without an additional manual control box.

Just like the bigger Celestron telescopes, the Astro Fi also come with the SkyAlign technology. This is a particularly simple technique for aligning the computer control to the actual night sky and your station. At the beginning of your stargazing session you must align the telescope to three bright celestial objects, that is all. The telescope uses the angles between the objects and the GPS-data from the smartphone or tablet to calculate the actual view of the sky. After this short procedure you can automatically approach any object that the SkyPortal-App shows you. All you must do, just touch the object on the touchscreen.

The special feature of this SkyAlign method is the fact that you even don’t need to know the names of the three bright objects you use for initializing the control. For beginners this is a great help, but it is also a useful feature for experienced stargazers, because at dawn the number of visible stars is often too low to assign the correct names.

The Astro Fi telescopes are equipped with a battery compartment. However, the best power supply method surely is the LiFePO4 powerpack from Celestron.

Tags: Celestron, telescope, Astro Fi
Posted in New Products »

Skywatcher Sky Panorama Eyepieces: More economical in a set!

January 9 2017, Stefan Taube

With immediate effect the popular ultra wide angle eyepieces of the Sky Panorama series are available in an economical set:

Skywatcher Eyepiece Set Sky Panorama with focal length of 7 mm, 15 mm, 23 mm.

You save 69.90 Euro when compared with the purchase of the individual eyepieces.
The three focal lengths fully cover the sensible range needed for observations with Dobson telescopes.

The Sky Panorama ultra-wide angle eyepieces offer a large field of view of 82° – a unique viewing experience across a very flat, well corrected and almost undistorted field. The eyepieces come with soft eyepiece caps, which can be simply rotated for correct positioning. Convenient viewing and also suitable for persons wearing glasses. For high contrast and maximum light transmission the lens areas have been broad spectrum multi tempered. The thread cut into the plug-in sleeve enables the use of filters.

Tags: Skywatcher, Telescope Accessories, eyepieces
Posted in Sale »

Omegon binocular mount: How to surf the sky with binoculars

January 2 2017, Marcus Schenk

It is simply fantastic: viewing the sky with binoculars. Hiking through the constellations of the milky way. Just take a detour to the next nebula. And then back to the Andromeda galaxy.
Exploring the sky with large binoculars is a lot fun. If their wasn’t the problem with the weight.

A tripod is a must, otherwise your arms will get heavy, even after just a few minutes. But most large binoculars have a weight of several kilograms and most tripod heads are thus overloaded. In practice: At an inclination of more than 45° most heads will start to slip, because friction becomes too high.

But now there is a solution: The Omegon binocular mount.

It consists of a 580 mm long rail (acc. to Aka-Swiss-Rail standard) and a 1 kg counterweight. Fasten your large binoculars on the opposite side. The mount the whole assembly on your tripod head. And all problems are gone.

Perfect balancing of your binoculars relieves the tripod head and allows any movement.

The forces are balanced
You simply float across the sky by slightly increasing the friction of your tripod head. Simply move the binoculars from one object to the next. And don’t bother with extremely tightened mount clamps. It gives you the impression as if your binoculars would surf the sky on the waves of light.

Some product recommendations for the Omegon binocular fixture:

Binoculars:
• Omegon Nightstar 15×70
• Omegon Nightstar 20×80
• Omegon Argus 11×70
• Omegon Argus 20×80

Tripods and tripod heads:
• Omegon aluminium tripod Titania 800 + 3D panorama head 500 + Novoflex Swiss-Rail profile
• Manfrotto aluminium tripod 475 B Pro Digital
• Cullmann tripod panorama head CONCEPT ONE OH4.5V
• Manfrotto video pan head MVH500AH Fluid + Novoflex Swiss-Rail profile

Tags: Omegon, Binocular Mount
Posted in New Products »

Infographic: The Star of Bethlehem

December 22 2016, Marcus Schenk

The story of the three kings travelling to Bethlehem is known by much of the western world. However, a number of cosmic phenomena could provide explanation to how a star could have shone so brightly to lead the three kings to the fertile crescent two millennia ago.

For more info on how this particular event may have occurred, have a look at our info-graphic below. The embed code for the info-graphic is also available.

(more…)

Tags: Infographic, Christmas
Posted in Observations »

Omegon V-Power: toughened focusers for better astro photos

November 28 2016, Marcus Schenk

Taking astro photos means facing many challenges. One of these are sharp astro photos. It is not easy to focus on weakly glowing stars and nebulae during the night. A perfectly tracked astro photo, but blurred? Inconceivable!

However, the perfect solution for this is now available: the new Omegon V-Power focusers. Making sure that your astro photo does not end up in drama, but as a story with a happy end.

What makes the V-Power focusers so distinct?

Important parts of the V-Power focuser are made of stainless steel instead of soft aluminium. Robust V2A ball bearings and stainless steel rings ensure high precision focusing. A dual speed 1:10 reduction provides the basis for a sensitively focusedastro photo, and the laser engraving allows you to return to previous settings very quickly. And if you have planned the future use of a motorized control, this is also possible.

With the V-Power finder base you can now also connect your finder scope. Simply attach the base to the focuser – and you are ready to go!

With these sets you can simply connect the focuser to your telescope

The V-Power series is available in different versions: for Newton and Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes. A plug & play solution is available in a set with matching adapters. Easy focusing in just a few steps.

You want to learn more? Follow this link to the focuser for better astro photos.

Tags: Focuser, Omegon, Telescope Accessories
Posted in New Products »

Skywatcher: A new addition to the Star Adventurer family

November 7 2016, Stefan Taube

The Star Adventurer from Skywatcher literally is a handy camera mount. For us, a camera mount is an astronomical mount that tracks the rotation of the sky with a photo camera, not with a telescope. This way you will successfully shoot impressive wide field images of the night sky: entire constellations, the belt of the milky way, or atmospheric constellations of the Moon and planets.

A new addition to the Star Adventurer family

The Mini Star Adventurer Wi-Fi from Skywatcheris now available:

Just like the classic Star Adventurer we also offer this model in two variations: The Photo-Set only consists of the photo mount without any further accessories. This variation is perfect for customers who already have accessories, or want to use the Star Adventurer for applications other than astro photography. The Astro-Set variation comes with everything you need to be able to use the Star Adventurer as an astronomical mount. You only need an additional camera tripod. An excellent solution is the very light Titania 600 from Omegon.

What has changed on the new Star Adventurer?

The Mini Star Adventurer Wi-Fi is no replacement for the classic model. As indicated by its name, the load capacity of the new version is lower. The classic Star Adventurer is able to carry approx. 5 kilogramme; for the Mini Star Adventurer the manufacturer recommends an additional load of maximum 3 kilogramme. This low load gives you the opportunity to operate the Mini Star Adventurer via an integrated powerpack, which is charged via Mini-USB. You no longer need any batteries.

Another major difference is the control via app: The Mini Star Adventurer Wi-Fi generates its own WIFI network. You can wirelessly connect your smartphone or tablet to the camera mount. For this purpose, Skywatcher provides an app for Android and iOS free of charge. The advantage of this app is the fact that no additional manual control is required because you already own a smartphone, including the convenience of the graphical user interface and touchscreen. You can actually use the app to control your camera via the Mini Star Adventurer Wi-Fi and to make a vast variety of settings. This all takes place without touching: no camera movement, no disturbance of the polar alignment.

By the way: With camera mounts like the models of the Star Adventurer series you will also be able to take panorama and time lapse images. Camera mounts are highly versatile tools for ambitious photographers.

Tags: Skywatcher, Telescope Accessories, Mount
Posted in New Products »

Winter clothes: The nights are getting cold again!

October 24 2016, Stefan Taube

Fashionable clothing actually is not our core competence, but we know exactly how the temperatures can drop during these autumn nights! This is why our outdoor range offers a selection of cold protection clothing.

The following items have been very well received:

The Astro-Overall for extremely cold frosty nights from Planam
The original Moonboots®. Who does not know them?
The TEGERA 295 winter glove from Ejendals. This glove protects against the cold, but is also flexible and robust for work on your astronomical equipment.
Since more and more telescopes can be operated via smartphone or tablet, we also offer 1st Touch gloves for touchscreens.
Be cool, but keep your head warm with the ColdTex cold protection fur cap.

You can even get your hot tea from a Thermos flask from us! Just add the hot tea.

Tags: Outdoor
Posted in New Products »

Celestron Inspire: New ideas for starter telescopes!

October 17 2016, Stefan Taube

My first telescope was a small, 60 millimetre refractor on a very wobbly azimuthal mount with a wooden tripod. Even though it was only a very simple piece of equipment, I had fun with it right from the beginning. I can still remember the fascination when looking at the Orion nebula for the first time. Even today I gladly use this simple achromatic telescope to watch sunspots – obviously through a solar filter!

However, such reasonable starter telescopes do not have to be wobbly! Telescope manufacturer Celestron shows that even budget-priced refractors on azimuthal mounts can feature exquisite product design. The new Inspire series features a few really innovative improvements.

This starts with a solid steel tripod. The accessory plate, which also stabilizes the tripod, no longer needs to be unscrewed after a star gazing session (the screw required for this purpose will sooner or later be lost in the grass anyway). Just simply open the interlock instead and fold down the tripod including the accessory plate. It has never been more convenient to set up or disassemble a tripod!

Apart from this, the clamping screws for the extendable tripod legs point inwards to make sure that you will not accidentally get entangled with your trousers.

Further features of the Inspire series:

The newly developed red dot finder comes with target circles instead of an annoying centre mark.
The Amici prism ensures an upright image, so that daytime nature observations are also possible.
The focusing screws of the focuser are big and have a good grip to allow the use of gloves.
The dust protection lid for the eyepiece also serves as a smartphone adapter. All eyepieces included in the scope of delivery can be clamped into this lid, just like the smartphone. This allows you to use your smartphone to take magnified photos of the Moon and planets through the eyepieces.
The mount is equipped with an integrated red light lamp. The diffuse light of this lamp illuminates the accessories plate without dazzling the eyes. However, you can easily pull the lamp out of the mount to use it as a pocket torch.

Currently, Celestron offers three models of the Inspire series

AC 70/700 AZ Ins pire The most budget-priced model.
AC 80/900 AZ Inspire The good aperture ratio suppresses colour related faults, perfect for the Moon, planets and for twin stars.
AC 100/660 AZ Inspire The model with the largest aperture.

Each of these three models is far better than my first telescope, but I still had a lot of fun with it!

Tags: Celestron, telescope, Inspire
Posted in New Products »