Wandering through the EAA Universe with alphatripleplus

I can't count how many times I've heard some variation of the questions: "What exactly is EAA?", and then the inevitable follow-up, "Well, how do I get started?" In the first blog issue last month, I tried to give my perspective on what distinguishes EAA from both  serious ( i.e. multi-hour ) astrophotography, and more casual AP,  sometimes called "AP-lite". Short answer: Both serious and casual AP involve post-processing saved data or images, while EAA doesn't.  It's also interesting to note that a lot of people starting out with EAA just want a nice picture that they can share with their friends. To these folks it doesn't make a difference whether the picture is a straight capture of an EAA live stack,  or if they spent a little time post-processing to make it appear more aesthetically pleasing and/or to bring out hidden details not visible in the original capture.  The point here is that if your goal is to get a "good" fin...

Welcome to my new blog, covering that little corner of the amateur astronomy world know as Electronically Assisted Astronomy - or just EAA for short. Let's start with the obvious question in most people's minds..... What is EAA? Fortunately for me, I can't be blamed for picking that name and acronym, which really gives no clue as to its meaning. Well, what do EAAers do?  Quick answer:  Take a digital camera, place it at the focus of a telescope (or sometimes a telephoto lens), point it at a target in the sky, and use specialized EAA software  to create a continuously updated image of the target in real time, usually with the telescope on a tracking mount. When I talk about "targets",  I am primarily referring to deep sky objects (DSOs), like star clusters, nebulae and galaxies, although EAA can be used to view planets, comets, the moon and the sun.    How does that differ from astrophotography (AP),  you may ask? Well, like EAA,  astrophotography ...