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What's the next step?
Hi folks, Bill here, just introducing myself - I've been lurking for a while.
I'm an experienced bird watcher and photographer, so not quite a noob, but not far off... I got into astronomy at school in the late 1970s, making friends at the school astronomy club (yeah, privileged?)
I started off with some wide-field shows, using nothing but a camera lens and a tripod. Then I got the Pentax K3-II which has an Astrotracer for short-period (3 minute) tracking. I wanted more.
I finally decided to get a scope (for my science teacher wife, you see) and plumped for a Meade LS6 - back in the days when Bintel was in Melbourne. Great tool for the job, which was to dump in the boot, take it to school, set it up in the middle of an oval, turn it on, watch it align itself, then tell it you want to see M42 or Eta Carinae, and it just did.
But me being me, I wanted more. For photography, I tried autoguiding the Meade with an Orion 80mm scope and an ASI120MM and lots of advice from a guy on AstronomyForum.com, but the alt-az mount defeated me over and over. I want more. Eventually I chucked a wobbly, went out to the shop and came back with an NEQ6 mount. Oh my, the satisfaction of getting it aligned right, and seeing that 6-minute exposure with round stars! But Melbourne has so much light pollution...
But I want more. The other day I got a half-way reasonable shot of the Horsehead nebula with a stack of 113 2 minute exposures from a dark (but windy) site near Hopetoun in NW Vic.
Now I want more. Stacking images, trying to learn about post-processing. The question is, what's better, time spent getting the data or time spent processing it? Obsessed? Me? I can give it up at any time.
I'm selling the Meade, and I'll use that to upgrade to an astrograph like an RC8, which has a much nicer f/ ratio.
Where next? I don't know. But I want better photos. I'm nowhere near as good as most of the people here, but it's fun trying. Perhaps an H-a filter will give me my next high...
I suspect the journey is far from over. I want more.
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