Electronically Assisted Astronomy (EAA) - Workshop and Book Signing

Tired of freezing while stargazing? Fed-up with missing those faint fuzzes? Then EAA is for you!

This is the message we came away with after attending the latest Flamsteed workshop, Electronically Assisted Astronomy (EAA), presented by Bobby Manoo assisted by some committee members.

Bobby related how he started on his EAA journey. After spending some nights freezing in his back garden photographing the night sky the thought struck him why couldn’t he control his imaging rig remotely and capture the night sky from the comfort of “indoors”.

He explained that there are two alternative approaches to achieving this; buying one of the new compact all-in-one automated telescope systems such as the ZWO Seestar or, putting together a system based on a small single board computer such as the Raspberry Pi. Bobby chose the later route, with the aim of building a system cheaper than a typical compact automated system and which could be controlled remotely.

He then talked through a number of small single board computers that could be used, running operating systems that were either a version of Linux or Windows. Clive then joined in by giving further details on the performance and cost of a range of these computers. He related his experience with the ZWO ASIAir, running a custom closed-source o/s based on Linux, and the AstroPC running Windows. He explained that, as already a user of Windows-based software for image capture, for him the AstroPC was the natural choice.

It was then time for a break to allow Mike and Richard to talk about and demonstrate their compact automated telescope systems, Mike his ZWO Seestar S30 and Richard his ZWO Seestar 50. There was a lot of interest shown in these systems and it was agreed that they are an excellent way for beginners to explore the night sky and get a start in astrophotography.

After the break Bobby explained more about how his system parts, (EQ mount, DSLR camera and guide scope camera), were connected to his Raspberry Pi and controlled using software called Stellamate OS.

He walked the attendees through how to install Stellamate and how to configure it to control a telescope rig for astrophotography. He then showed how his rig could be controlled remotely from his laptop PC, via a Wi-Fi link to the Raspberry Pi. Finally everyone was the invited to come and try and examine the setup for themselves.

Many thanks to Bobby for hosting such an informative and entertaining workshop and to Clive, Mike and Richard for their support.

Images By Parbatee Manoo