New kit for a new year

"Ideal for group observing, public outreach" - the Revolution Imager R2.

Credit: www.thesecretstudio.net

As we head into 2018, we look forward to getting our hands on more exciting and innovative products for our monthly reviews, so that you can be up to date with the latest products.

For our January issue, Pete Lawrence takes a look at the new version of Explore Scientific’s PN210 Carbon MkII imaging Newtonian.

With instruments such as this, readers regularly take stunning images and submit them to our Hotshots gallery, so Pete checked out the improvements as he took aim at the sky.

Wi-fi control of mounts and complete systems are quickly becoming mainstream and Sky-Watcher have joined in with their SkyMax127 (AZ-GTi) Wi-Fi mount.

This has an integrated wi-fi of its own, so you can control your mount via smartphone or smart tablet with their own SynScan app. I had fun touring the sky with just my iPhone and occasionally iPad and can see how this might signal the death knell to the humble hand controller!

In the January issue we also welcome new reviewer Sara Wager. Sara produces award-winning deep-sky images and this month looks at an aspect of astrophotography that is often overlooked by reviewers: astro processing software.

We often forget that behind that great image is a lot of painstakingly captured images that are then stacked and processed to bring out as much detail as possible.

Sara tests the Astro Pixels Processor deep-sky processing program, to see how it fares.

Read all of our reviews and find out what's in the sky this month in the January issue of BBC Sky at Night Magazine, out 21 December!

Click here for the full list of Paul's blogs.

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