Video Resources

Below are a collection of astrophotography videos and astronomy videos to watch online that I have made to help explain topics in addition to the text and images found other places on this website. If you have suggestions on what you think would make for some cool astronomy videos, drop me a line and I will see what I can do. Hopefully these astrophotography tutorials will help you learn how to do astrophotography.

You can also visit my YouTube channel to see these videos and as well as videos on other topics. I try to put all my YouTube astronomy videos and YouTube astrophotography videos here but they do show up on YouTube first. Be sure you subscribe to the channel while you are there!

This is a video that shows me setting up my primary telescope for astrophotography from scratch. From lugging the cases to where I am going to set up to the point where I am ready to align the scope. I couldn’t show everything as it got dark 🙂 This is a nice addition to my astronomy videos because when I was starting out I could not find anything similar. Lots of people showed the balancing, or the polar alignment, but no one ever showed everything from start to finish. I hope it helps someone wondering how it all goes together.

Here is a beginner’s lecture I gave early on in my astrophotography (which explains some of the stupid things I say, heh). It still has a lot of good information in it so I thought I would leave it up hoping it would help someone. There is an interesting question and answer section at the end of the video.

Many people I know have never seen a solar eclipse. Even those who have didn’t see it through a proper filter and certainly not from the very start through to the annularity (where the moon is covering as much of the sun as it will during that eclipse) in under a minute flat. There are a lot of video astronomy cameras out there but I shot this with a standard digital video camera with a solar filter on it. This turned out to be a great way to be using video for astrophotography. Even if you never get to see one in real life you can see one in astrophotography videos.

There are two primary ways to connect a DSLR camera to a telescope; prime focus and eyepiece projection. This video shows you both methods so you get a firm grasp on what all is involved. It also shows you how to connect your phone or a point and shoot camera.

Here is a presentation I gave to the North Houston Astronomy Club right after I published my first book, Getting Started: Long Exposure Astrophotography. It was a great learning experience but I went entirely too fast and was entirely too nervous. Hopefully I will do better next time.