Hi, I'm Walt Watson - an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer living on Cape Cod with a lifelong passion for the night sky. I've been doing astrophotography for several years now, capturing everything from wide-field Milky Way shots to close-ups of nebulae and galaxies, all from my front yard.
Clear skies don't come every night out here, but when they do I make the most of them. I share new images regularly on my social pages - Bluesky is where you'll find me most.
The Equipment
Narrow Field Rig 571mm
- Telescope
- SVBony SV503 102ED - a 102mm f/7 apochromatic refractor. The extra-low dispersion glass lets this doublet approach the performance of pricier triplet instruments.
- Camera
- ZWO ASI533MC Pro - a dedicated one-inch square-sensor astronomy camera with built-in cooling, which cuts thermal noise during the long exposures faint nebulae and galaxies demand.
- Mount
- ZWO AM5 - a harmonic drive equatorial mount. Virtually backlash-free and precise enough to track targets accurately across long imaging sessions.
Wide Field Rig 245mm
- Telescope
- SVBony SV555 Petzval Astrograph - a flat-field design built for wide expanses of sky.
- Camera
- ZWO ASI2600MC Pro - a larger APS-C format cooled astronomy camera for big targets and sweeping fields.
- Mount
- ZWO AM3 - the AM5's smaller harmonic drive sibling, with the same backlash-free precision tracking.
Curious what these rigs can see tonight? The Tonight's Sky dashboard has a scope filter for each one.