About Me

Not a NASA engineer (though I’d have loved that!), just someone who points things at the sky at night.

Nicolas

Former IT systems engineer, certified adult education instructor, and now a primary school teacher. Amateur astrophotographer by night (when the sky cooperates). I (re)discovered astrophotography with a Seestar S50 in 2025, and since then I’ve been spending an unreasonable amount of time capturing objects I’ll never see with the naked eye. This site was born from that passion: sharing what I’ve learned through trial, error, and sleepless nights, literally.

My Smart Telescope

ZWO Seestar S50

This is the one that started it all. Compact, easy to use, and capable of stunning results once you know how to process the images. The Seestar S50 let me photograph galaxies, nebulae and clusters from my backyard, at a very affordable price and with an almost instant learning curve. It’s the ideal tool for getting started and learning the basics of astrophotography, and honestly, even after investing in a traditional setup, I still take it out regularly.

50 mm aperture • 250 mm focal length • IMX462 sensor • Built-in LP filter

My Traditional Setup

Once the astrophotography bug bites, you always end up wanting to go further. My traditional setup gives me more resolution, wider field of view, and longer exposures, but the price tag is a whole different story.

Askar 71F

Telescope

71 mm apochromatic refractor with a 0.75x focal reducer, giving a 367 mm focal length at f/5.1. Compact, lightweight, and tack-sharp. The built-in field flattener means no extra corrector needed, which greatly simplifies the rig.

ZWO ASI 585MC Pro

Camera

Cooled colour IMX585 sensor. Very sensitive, excellent performance in both short and long exposures. Cooling reduces thermal noise, a real comfort compared to the Seestar.

ZWO ASIAIR Plus

Controller

The brain of the setup. It handles focusing, slewing, guiding and capture sequences from a tablet. It’s what makes a traditional setup almost as easy as a smart telescope.

Juwei 14

Mount

Compact and silent harmonic equatorial mount. Paired with autoguiding, it’s very accurate and handles long exposures with ease, while remaining lightweight and portable.

SVBony SV260 2"

Filter

Multi-band 5-band filter in 2-inch format (44 mm clear aperture, 90 % transmittance). It brings out plenty of detail on emission nebulae and lets you start doing pseudo HOO, even under light-polluted skies.

DIY pier

Accessory

Straight, sturdy, no vibrations, simple, ugly but terribly effective!