Rob Masters

Astrophotography is arguably the most technically demanding discipline in the art of photography, with high demands in both equipment and post-processing. In recent years advances in mobile phone technology have given everyone access to easy wide-field astrophotography, leaving three areas that still require high end equipment: Stellar, Planetary, and Deep-sky.  Is there still a place for high end equipment in wide-field? Absolutely! Just like the Instagram folks are discovering that a real camera takes better photos than a mobile phone, so too will a dedicated astro rig take better photos than a mobile phone.  But the mobile is accessible, cheap, and easy to use - so it will get folks in.  If you can get shots like this in a Bortle 5 area, it will get you excited, and some folks will be inspired enough to go further.  But what about deep sky? Enter the "Smart Telescope".  These are not so much telescopes as dedicated astrophotography rigs. These have many advan...

 Consider the following installation.  By itself, it could be almost anything. Maybe slightly ominous, depending on what the music is like. Now let's add a character. Maybe a nice old lady astrophysicist . Suddenly, it is probably just some funky radio telescope or similar. Perfectly normal, nothing bad is going to happen to anyone because of it. So let's change it to some bloke scientist. Everything is still probably fine, depending on the music. Just some researcher. This does not mean that things might not go horribly wrong, but they seem to be perfectly normal. We can make it even more normal by using two characters - Honey! I'm home! But I digress. Back to the slow decline. Now things are looking dodgy. Red glasses, self-satisfied smirk, weird flask of something green... it all adds up to this is probably nothing good for anyone. But we can step it up more. OK, exposed brain alien dude. Let's face it, we're in for a rough and nasty ride. Probably with some awfu...