First of all, no we don't currently sell any astronomy-specific products. Why you ask? The reason is straight-forward: it's a very specialized area and we think these products are best left to the experts to sell and service.

For those in the Lower Mainland of BC, we highly recommend Markarian Fine Optics. We are very impressed with Harout's deep and up-to-date expertise, passion and professionalism. We also love how warm, friendly and outgoing he is!

We understand that All-Star Telescope (based in Alberta) and Ontario Telescope also have excellent reputations.

For video astronomy, be sure to check out MallinCam, a Canadian company.

Astronomy Resources

(1)  www.ClearDarkSky.com  An indispensable time-and-effort saver and frustration-reducer. Includes very precise cloud cover forecasts, light pollution maps, hour-by-hour weather info, Aurora Borealis, and countless other items for your location (and most others in North America).

(2)  Stellarium.org  A very popular and remarkable resource to understand your night (or daytime) sky. We love the ability to plan the best date / time / location to view target objects. For example, if you want to see Jupiter, Stellarium can tell you exactly where it will be in the sky for any given location, date and time.

(3)  Astronomy-tools  Includes a handy tool to figure out the right magnification for your object of interest.

 (4) BBC Sky at Night Magazine  An excellent resource that includes detailed, thoughtful and reliable reviews of a huge range of astronomy equipment. We recently relied upon this resource to choose a grab-and-go mount that we plan to take to Tofino, BC for some awesome dark sky viewing! (NB: we chose a Vixen SX2 with Starbook Ten controller - with Harout's help, we also plan to use Sky Safari with this mount).

(5) Amateur Astronomy Photo of the Day  As the name suggests, a gorgeous collection of amateur astronomy photographs, including a new one each day.

(5) Astromart.com  It's like eBay, but just for astronomy equipment. We've heard some mixed reviews, but (so far) we've had a very good experience with the service. If you are okay with used or like-new equipment, there are some great deals to be found.

(6) AstroFilters.com – Reviews of Astrophotography Filters For those living in light-polluted cities (most of us), it's essential to filter out the "skyglow" for any deep-space imaging (eg. nebulas). We like this website for its unbiased and comprehensive reviews of available filters.

(7) The Role of Data Science in Astronomy and Interstellar Exploration (datascienceprograms.com) For those seeking a more in-depth understanding of large-scale telescopes (eg., Hubble, James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Extremely Large Telescope (XLT), etc.), this excellent resource was sent to us by Sarah Walker, having been found by one of her students, Jeremy.

(8) Jonathan's Space Report (planet4589.org) This website received a shout-out in the following video: I Accidentally Photographed Something Unknown During the Eclipse - Smarter Every Day 298 (youtube.com). As Destin explains, it's an 'old-school' website dedicated to information about satellites.

(9) 100,000 Stars (chromeexperiments.com) A 3D interactive map of more than 100,000 nearby stars. MB.

 

Astrophotography

How cool would it be to have remote control over your telescope, and to be able to see what it sees from anywhere? eg., instead of crouching outside in the cold, you could be huddled under a blanket on the sofa with a hot cup of coffee?

We found this following YouTube video very helpful to achieve this level of comfort (lazy?):

Regarding perfectly focused stars, and keeping perfect focus for hours, the author is finding inspiration from this video:

 

Regarding the use of AI to achieve a 'push-button' automatic telescope, be sure to watch this video before buying one: