Sky Guides

What we would tell you at the eyepiece.

No affiliate links, no round-ups, no best-of lists. Notes from a workshop that has to answer for what it sells.

Engineering

What a Strehl number actually tells you

0.95 sounds like marketing. It is a measurement, it has a definition, and here is what it does and does not promise.

Aparna Deshmukh · 1 min read

Observing

Four months of cloud is not four months off. What to plan for, and how to be set up in the eleven minutes the sky gives you.

Vikram Sethi · 1 min read

Gear

Aperture, mount and where you will actually use it — in that order. Everything else on the box is noise.

Vikram Sethi · 1 min read

Engineering

A tilted dome is not a style choice. It changes seating, sightlines, projector count and how a show has to be shot.

Rehan Qureshi · 1 min read

Gear

The maintenance task that scares people off reflectors takes less time than making tea, once you know what you are looking at.

Vikram Sethi · 1 min read

Engineering

Speech wants a dry room. Immersive audio wants a live one. Variable absorption is how you stop choosing.

Leela Nair · 1 min read