DSLR

We are thrilled to announce that Citizen Sky has a new permanent home at the AAVSO!

Now that the epsilon Aurigae eclipse is over and the special, eps Aur issue of the JAAVSO is being published, Citizen Sky has a new mission -- more than one in fact!  Citizen Sky will be the new home of bright variable star activities at the AAVSO.  We have already developed a binocular observing program and will be developing a DSLR observing manual in early 2013.

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Greetings Everyone,

The DSLR Documentation and Reduction team will host a team meeting in the AAVSO chatroom to discuss our contribution to the upcoming JAAVSO special issue on Thursday, December 22 (due to a power outage and subsequent damage at AAVSO it has been rescheduled to) Wednesday, December 28 at 2:00 PM Eastern (19:00 UTC)Read more

Mark your calendars: members from the DSLR Documentation and Reduction team will be hosting a second chat on Saturday, March 19 at 11:00 AM Eastern.  If you have questions about using your DSLR camera for photometry, or any portion of our tutorials please plan to attend.  

Although the chat has since ended, you can read the PDF transcript here.  We look forward to seeing you at our next chat!

Connection Methods:

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I decided to postpone my discussion of IRTF for one more day to announce something even cooler!  The DSLR Documentation and Reduction team has released their first set of tutorials for general use. These tutorials walk you through how you can use your DSLR camera (or any other camera that can take RAW files) to do high-precision photometry, acheiving results of 0.01 or 0.001 mag precision!Read more

While there has been some discussion about using a DSLR camera for photometry, and there will be a Workshop devoted to it, those with DSLR cameras may also find using them for spectroscopy an interesting and rewarding challenge.

During the first Workshop in Chicago, part of the Workshop will be devoted to low resolution spectroscopy using a DSLR camera with a Star Analyser spectrograph ($200). As with DSLR photometry, no modifications are needed for the camera, save a means of attaching the Star Analyser (easy). You can even do it on a tripod without a telescope.Read more

The Hopkins Phoenix Observatory will be presenting two workshops on Friday, August 7. One will be on spectroscopy of epsilon Aurigae and the other on Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera photometry of epsilon Aurigae.

The spectroscopy workshop will provide an introduction to spectroscopy. There will be a discussion on what spectroscopy can be done with a minimum amount of equipment and expense. For those people wishing more, a review of the Lhires III spectrograph and its use for high resolution spectroscopy with some tips and tricks will be presented. Spectroscopy is exciting and easier than you may think.

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