Gidday all

[area51]

Well thought i should get off my but and stop trying to wing it by myself. I had a 12 inch DOB with steel tube with the usual mount, but man was it a pain to take outside all the time. I live 50 km from Adelaide so have nice black sky's but my ignorance and wanting the biggest i could afford at the time came back to bite me lol. I learnt quickly the DOB was not much good for Astro pics unless i had a goto mount blah blah blah, so i sold it and sat around licking my wounds for a few years.Anyway found this site and now i'm a happy camper again, i have spent so much time here my wife must think i'm chatting with another woman.Anyway getting back into again but this time i will start off with hopefully a little more grey matter being used in the old noggin. I recentl purchased a nice used skywatcher 127 mak with red dot and williams diag and 8-24 eyepiece, also purchased an eq5 pro goto mount from this site, so this combo should be a nice starter kit for me. I know a lot of you guy's have serious kit, so one day i hope to get in on that also, but it seems selling a kidney may have to be an option lol. Anyway cheers all and happy watching.:)

[tonybarry]

Hi Tony,

Good to read your bytes. Welcome to Ice In Space.

Yeah the Dob is a great idea as long as you don't have to move it. And taking pics needs tracking - which the dob is not great at doing on its own. The new crop of goto dobs are better for video imaging (where you stack to get depth) but for proper astro photography you do need a good equatorial mount.

Polar alignment will be your next consideration. I have stuck with alt-az goto scopes (except for one session with an LXD75 equatorial) so I can't comment on the task except to note it requires some patience. If you can leave the scope set up then your task is made very much easier.

Anyway, welcome aboard.

Regards
Tony Barry
WSAAG