SaratogaSkies Help Page

or how to find your way around this site

Navigation

The main navigation buttons will take you to various informational areas of the site.

The Articles page has a list of articles I've written on different astrophotography-related matters. Most of them cover technical issues I encountered in my astrophotography journey. My well-received Astrophotography Cookbook is linked from that page.

The Equipment page has a brief summary of the equipment and software I use to acquire and process my images.

New Items provides a thumbnail-based set of links to my latest images. New items are also posted on the home page.

Site Map lists every image page, every article, and every general page that you can find on the site.

Images, Searching and Sorting

The “category” buttons under Images allow for convenient browsing of images by object type. They generate a list of thumbnails that link to matching images. More recent images are listed first. For example, to generate a list of sprial galaxies, click on Galaxies » Spiral. A “parent” category button includes all of the subcategories of its “children” buttons. So, to generate a list of all galaxy images, just click on the Galaxies button.

Similarly, the buttons in the Sort menu allows for browsing of images by Scope, Camera, and astronomical Catalog. For example, clicking on by Scope » Orion ED80 will generate a list of images taken with the Orion ED80 scope. Similarly, to generate a list of Messier images, click on by Catalog » Messier.

More general searches can be performed by putting keywords in the Search box in the upper-right corner of any page. Images and Articles are searched in their Name, Number, and Comments (Description) fields for matches. Messier and Barnard numbers should be entered without spaces (e.g., M42, B33) while NGC, IC, LBN, and LDN numbers should be entered with spaces (e.g., NGC 2244).

In addition, the Search function will find the mouse-over labels on the various image pages! E.g., a search for LDN 1729 will match the Antares shot, since that dark nebula is one of the labeled objects in that image.

If you want to look for several keywords, separate them by commas and an “OR” search will be performed. For example, search for constellation, nebula and you will get matches of either word in the results. If you want both words to appear, use AND like so: constellation AND nebula. If you want one but not the other, type constellation NOT nebula. You can use double quotes to search for phrases. For example, "Emission Nebula" AND cluster will return results that match both cluster and emission nebula.

You will also notice that some images are marked obsolete. This means that an updated image of this object is available on my web site. In an attempt to track my progress, I do not remove obsolete images from the site, but allow my previous attempts to be viewed and compared to my most recent ones.

News

To keep you updated with the current changes on the site and news, there is a short listing of them under the search box in the right top corner of each page. If you would like to be informed on the latest development on this site, please visit my blog. You can also subscribe to the RSS Feed of the blog and/or blog comments and receive timely updates.

I receive a lot of questions about my astrophotography process as well as nuances of operating my equipment. I decided it would be useful to have a discussion forum on the site to address those questions and allow people to communicate with each other on this topic. You have to be a registered user to post comments in the forum. However, anybody can read the posts.

Links

The Links section has links to my blog and to my forum as well as groups I participate in and useful astro sites I often visit.

I Want to Hear from You!

I hope you find my sight useful in your astrophotography endaevours. Feedback is welcome. , or, for you 21st Century types, post comments at my blog or in my discussion forum.