Autumn is on the way - the spectacle of the southern skies Milky Way is getting closer too!

Over the next few weeks BINTEL will be running a series on what you need to capture night sky panoramas

Pentax binoculars - excellent value for birdwatching, nature, and sports

Vixen Polarie star tracker - compact and portable

Samyang lenses - widefield, sharp lenses for magical night scapes

VIXEN ATERA II 14X42 Stabilised Binoculars - compact high-tech binoculars 

First Quarter Moon this weekend - ideal time to go Lunar viewing

Space News - Intuitive Machines heads to the Moon 

The Great Orion Nebula (M42) taken by Steve Olney using a $899 ZWO Seestar S50 and posted to the BINTEL Society Facebook group here. Exposure was only a few minutes with tweaks in Siril. Posting an image of M42 like this seems to have become "must do" for the many hundreds of our Seestar S50 customers, the majority of whom have never taken an astro photo before. 

To be featured, you can send us your Astro and Nature images here or post them the BINTEL Society Facebook Group where you can join more than 1.7k fellow astronomy and nature fanatics! 

Pentax binoculars - excellent value for birdwatching, nature and sports

We're quite fond of Pentax binoculars - good value for money and great optics!

A selection of the Pentax binoculars available from BINTEL

Pentax offers a range of full-sized binoculars for birdwatching, nature sports and general outdoor use, through to the tiny Papilio models that start at $179.

Highly recommended by BINTEL staff!

All Pentax models are great for beginners as well. A good example is the Pentax SP 8x84 which is a popular size for birdwatching and now just $109.

They have an aluminium chassis and are waterproof too!

Autumn is on the way - and so is the spectacle of the southern skies Milky Way

As the weather gets colder, the beautiful heart the Milky Way spreads across our southern sky once more. 

As our orbit around the Sun takes us into autumn and winter, we face the inner core of the Milky Way at night. If you can get away from city lights and pick a night where's there little to the no Moonlight, the arc of our home galaxy stretching overhead is stunning.

Colours and details in the star clouds that are just beyond the reach of our eyes are easily revealed by even a thirty second exposure on just about an most DSLR cameras and some folks are even taking Milky Way images with just their phone.

To keep images sharp while the Earth turns, you need to mount your DSRL camera and lens on a gizmo that follows the sky's movement. These sorts of mounts are often referred to as "sky trackers".

There's several brands of Star Trackers mounts from different manufacturers. BINTEL carries all major models - 

• Vixen - compact, Japanese made star trackers
• Sky-Watcher - popular, value for money 
• iOptron - precision star trackers with electronic polar alignment
• Polaris - the first high-tech "Smart Star Tracker"

We'll be touching on the various mounts from each of these brands over the coming weeks. 

One thing to remember though is that using a DSLR and a star tracker mount one of the most straightforward ways to get astro images you'll be proud off and happy to share around. 

A part of our range of star tracker mounts - have a chat with BINTEL about your best choice.

Vixen POLARIE Star Tracker Astrophotography Camera Mount - compact and portable

To kick off our 2024 star tracker mounts round up - one for the travellers.

We now have the Japanese made Vixen Polarie star tracker mount. It simply sits on a ball head on top of your camera tripod and has a number of features to help with alignment. 

It's also amazingly compact and lightweight at just under 800g. An easy fit addition to your existing camera bag to capture beautiful, long exposure nightscapes. 

Samyang lenses - widefield, sharp lenses for the night scapes

Ideal for Milky Way images.

If you're planning to capture wide-field, deep sky images of the Milky Way, the Magellanic Clouds or other parts of the sky with your DSRL camara, a star tracker mount is a must, but - the next way to improve your images is an to upgrade your camera lens. 

Most DSLR kits include a decent quality starter lens that you've probably found great for day-to-day photos. A wider-angle lens lets you photograph more of the sky at once, and you'll find they'll open up new daylight photographic options for you too. These lens from Samyang have been used to produce many famous night scapes and will help you expand your astro imaging abilities. 

Vixen ATERA II 14X42 Stabilised Binoculars - compact high-tech binoculars

Quality, compact image stabilising binoculars in stock now

The Vixen ATERA are genuine, go-anywhere image stabilising binoculars. They offer the upside of being see clear images of distant objects with 14x power, while removing the hassle of simply trying to hold higher magnification binoculars still via image stabilization. 

They also use commonly available AAA sized batteries, are water and fog proof and have wonderful, made in Japan quality.  Drop by BINTEL to check them out for yourself!

First Quarter Moon this weekend - ideal time to go Lunar viewing

Long shadows highlight spectacular features.

The Moon being photographed by a DWARF II Smart Telescope - screenshot of the DWARF app.

The period around first and last quarter Moon phase is great for Lunar viewing. There's a lifetime of exploration and discovery on the ever-changing side of the Moon that faces us. It's not as special as a full Moon when viewed with just your eyes, but you'll see amazing details through a small telescope or even a pair of binoculars. 

Here's a few suggestions for craters that can be spotted in different sizes of telescopes.  First of all - we're going to be using the Virtual Moon Atlas. This is a free and widely used program that can be downloaded via the link below. It runs on Windows and Linux. 

The Virtual Moon up and running.

Both Sabine and Ritter craters should be visible in a 70mm telescope like a Sky-Watcher 70/900 AZ-Go2 These two craters are close by, and both are about 30km across. You can find them on a Moon atlas or search for Sabine on the Virtual Moon Atlas to see the general area where the crater is located and then zooming in to see more detail.

We must answer the perennial question of "Can I see the Apollo spacecraft on Moon" with a firm NO - but you can spot this weekend the craters named after the three astronauts on the Apollo 11 mission that first landed on the Moon. 

Search for either Collins, Amstrong or Aldrin and it will show you three small craters close to Ritter and Sabine. These are named in commemoration of the Apollo 11 crew. The craters are about 3 km across. To spot these you'll need an 8" telescope like the Celestron StarSense Explorer or the Celestron 8SE.  

You'll see from the map they're also quite close to the area called "Statio Tranquillitatis" -the Latin name for Tranquility Base, the place where humans first set foot on the Moon.

Space News - Intuitive Machines heads to the Moon

If successful, will be the first USA landing on the Moon since Apollo 17 in December 1972.

The Moon rush continues! Yet another mission to the Moon was successfully launched this week aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.  The Intuitive Machine IM-1 mission we mentioned last week is now coasting towards the Moon. This being carried out by a private company and not a government space agency like NASA.

It's due to touch down later this week in a crater called Malpert A, very close to the Moon's south pole. You can look it up on the Virtual Moon program. We'll have a report on landing next week! Why is it landing so close to the south pole? It's going to look for water. More here.

If all goes well, details of the successful landing will be next week's BINTEL newsletter.