skyandtelescope.org• JUNE 2020 69pOFF-SCOPE GEAR From left to right, the author’s laptop computer,
video display (a portable DVD player), and digital video recorder ready for
an evening of fun. The cable switch box (far right) is used to send video
output to either the display or the DVR.One early autumn evening, I hauled my 8-inch SCT, video
camera, and a 19-inch monitor out to our club’s public view-
ing site. By the time visitors began to pour onto the grounds,
I had the magnifi cent Hercules globular cluster, M13, framed
on the monitor and looking bright and beautiful. That eve-
ning I took guests on a tour of dozens of the best late sum-
mer deep-sky objects. Everybody could see them, and nobody
had to wait in line. I still remember one little girl dragging
her mother away from a big Dobsonian nearby and chirping,
“Mommy, you can see it over here for real on TV!”
Diving into the Deep End
As rewarding and exciting as my experiences had been, the
technology hadn’t yet taken me deeper into the universe.
That changed when I used my video rig at a dark-sky site for
the fi rst time. I’d been intrigued by an article I’d read online
about observing groups of galaxies discovered by astronomer
Paul Hickson. Known as Hickson Compact Groups (HCGs),
the individual galaxies in these collections are generally faint
(many at magnitudes of 16 and dimmer) and can be quite a
VIDEO GALLERY
This collection of frame grabs shows what video astronomy is all about — seeing deeper in more detail than is typically possible
with just an eyepiece. The objects themselves look far better in “real time,” as the images are displayed at 30 frames per second,
regardless of exposure times.M17M27M15M33M16M83NGC 891M20