News/Research

And now for something different! Eric Paulos on Capturing the Cosmos

30 Jul, 2021

And now for something different! Eric Paulos on Capturing the Cosmos

Eric Paulos might be an EECS Professor at Berkeley, but his interests go well beyond computing and human-computer interaction. Eric recently wrote an article on Medium called Cosmos Caputring: Under the Hood (and Clear Skies). In the article, Eric discusses his long-lived interest in astronomy and how he has been satisfying this interest through his own astrophotography setup.

From the article:

When I do go out to image deep sky objects, I have a more dediated astrophotography setup. My latest images are shot using a Celestron Edge HD 8" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope with a 2032mm focal length (and 8" aperture) making it F/10 (see image at top). It’s on an equatorial CGX mount that helps cancel the rotation of the earth to enable taking long exposures without star trails. I’m also using a ZWO ASI533MC Pro dedicated color astronomy CMOS camera cooled to -20C, a ZWO ASI290MM Mini guide camera on a 60mm guide scope, an electronic auto-focuser, and an ASI Air Pro (essentially a specialized Raspberry Pi for dedicated astrophotography) to manage everything. I always select targets before I go out to image for the night so I have a plan. I select objects appropriately positioned high in the sky (to avoid atmospheric disturbances) and up for long periods of time to allow the longest possible imaging opportunities.

Read the entire article here!