Astro
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Images
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Sky
Sky
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Star
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Trails
Aurora
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Borealis
Meteors
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About
About
Saskatoon Skies
Saskatoon Skies
Why Saskatoon Skies?
The short answer is: This is what happens when a retired engineer has too much time on his hands.
For the long answer you need to take a ride with me in Mr. Peabody's Wayback machine...
For my tenth birthday my parents gave me a very modest telescope. This was just months after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, and I just couldn't get enough of it (the moon that is, not Neil's foot). I'd spend hours out in the back yard looking at the moon and whatever else I could find.
Eventually the telescope broke and I couldn't afford to replace it. Ever since then I have wanted to get back into astronomy but could never justify spending the kind of money that the telescope I that I wanted cost.
Fast-forward five decades...
My wife had given me a Celestron C90 spotting scope for bird watching and it occurred to me that I could use it (with a few relatively inexpensive accessories) to get my feet wet in astronomy once more. I didn't want to spend thousands on equipment only to find myself getting bored with it. The C90 was a means of testing the waters without breaking the bank. If I didn't lose interest while using the C90, then maybe I could justify breaking the bank. So I bought myself an iOptron CubePro GoTo mount, a ZWO ASI224MC planetary camera, and various eyepieces, adapters, and accessories.
And I was hooked!
Now, the thing about astronomy is that it only works when the sky is clear. And owing to various factors (the trees in my yard, the overhang of the veranda, the streetlight across the street) it is actually kind of hard to see what kind of weather is approaching - and hence whether it is worth going outside with my telescope gear - without actually going outside. So I thought to myself:
After doing some research on the interweb I concluded that:
I chose option c).
Once I decided to take on an all-sky camera project I realized that I could use it to capture more cool things than just the current sky conditions. Like star trails, time lapse video of the stars and clouds, and the aurora borealis.
The short answer is: This is what happens when a retired engineer has too much time on his hands.
For the long answer you need to take a ride with me in Mr. Peabody's Wayback machine...
For my tenth birthday my parents gave me a very modest telescope. This was just months after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, and I just couldn't get enough of it (the moon that is, not Neil's foot). I'd spend hours out in the back yard looking at the moon and whatever else I could find.
Eventually the telescope broke and I couldn't afford to replace it. Ever since then I have wanted to get back into astronomy but could never justify spending the kind of money that the telescope I that I wanted cost.
Fast-forward five decades...
My wife had given me a Celestron C90 spotting scope for bird watching and it occurred to me that I could use it (with a few relatively inexpensive accessories) to get my feet wet in astronomy once more. I didn't want to spend thousands on equipment only to find myself getting bored with it. The C90 was a means of testing the waters without breaking the bank. If I didn't lose interest while using the C90, then maybe I could justify breaking the bank. So I bought myself an iOptron CubePro GoTo mount, a ZWO ASI224MC planetary camera, and various eyepieces, adapters, and accessories.
And I was hooked!
Now, the thing about astronomy is that it only works when the sky is clear. And owing to various factors (the trees in my yard, the overhang of the veranda, the streetlight across the street) it is actually kind of hard to see what kind of weather is approaching - and hence whether it is worth going outside with my telescope gear - without actually going outside. So I thought to myself:
"It would be cool if I could keep track of current viewing conditions remotely.If only I had a webcam looking up at the night sky ..."
After doing some research on the interweb I concluded that:
a) there aren't any local webcams that show a clear view of the sky,
b) commercially available all-sky cameras are really expensive, and
c) it wouldn't be all that difficult to make my own.
I chose option c).
Once I decided to take on an all-sky camera project I realized that I could use it to capture more cool things than just the current sky conditions. Like star trails, time lapse video of the stars and clouds, and the aurora borealis.