Dr. Amanda Foster

By March for Science SV | Updated A trinocular microscope gives you a dedicated third optical path for camera mounting while keeping both eyes on the eyepieces. That extra port means you can document specimens, record video, or stream a live demo without fighting over who gets to look. I have spent the last several … Read more

When I started documenting slides for my biology classroom, I spent weeks squinting through one eyepiece and switching to a notebook between every specimen. After adding a microscope camera attachment, my workflow changed overnight. I could snap stills, record videos, and project slides live for a room full of students without anyone missing a view. … Read more

Starting your journey into microscopy opens up an invisible world of wonder. When my daughter got her first microscope last year, we quickly realized that finding quality prepared slide sets for beginner microscopists was essential to keeping her interest alive. After testing dozens of sets over the past six months, our team narrowed down the … Read more

Learning how to polar align an equatorial mount for visual observing is one of those skills that looks intimidating the first time, then becomes a 10-minute ritual the tenth time. I spent my first two years wobbling around the night sky chasing Jupiter because I never quite got the mount’s polar axis parallel to Earth’s … Read more

Watching the moon’s craters appear in sharp relief along the terminator is one of the most rewarding experiences for any backyard observer. I’ve spent dozens of nights tracking the terminator line as it sweeps across the lunar surface, and the difference between a flat-looking full moon and a dramatically shadowed first quarter view is genuinely … Read more

Learning how to photograph a meteor shower with your phone is easier than most people think. I started shooting the Perseids from my backyard three years ago with nothing but an iPhone, a $25 tripod, and a lot of patience. By the end of that first night I had two clean meteor streaks, and I … Read more

You point your phone at the Moon, snap a photo, and instead of craters and shadows you get a glowing white blob. Every smartphone owner who has tried lunar photography knows this frustration. The good news is that once you understand why your phone’s camera fails at this task, the fix becomes surprisingly straightforward. In … Read more

I have chased blood moons from rooftops, deserts, and frozen backyards at 3 a.m. for the better part of a decade. Every time totality arrives, the same thing happens: the bright silver disk dims and transforms into something that looks like a glowing coal suspended in black space. It is one of the most rewarding … Read more

WARNING: Never look at the Sun through a telescope, binoculars, or camera without a properly certified solar filter mounted on the FRONT of the instrument. Doing so can cause permanent blindness in a fraction of a second. This is not a risk. It is a certainty. If you are here, you want to observe the … Read more

CRITICAL SAFETY WARNING: Looking at the sun through a telescope without a properly installed objective solar filter causes instant and permanent eye damage, including blindness. A telescope concentrates sunlight by thousands of times, so even a brief glimpse can burn your retina in under one second. Every step in this guide is designed to keep … Read more