G'day from me

[Tristan]

Hey, I'm new to posting on this forum and reasonably new to astronomy, I live in Brisbane, which isn't great for astronomy, but there are some good spots an hour or two away for camping and dark skies. I started my journey into astronomy about a year ago, with a Skywatcher 130p. I loved it but immediately wanted a bigger scope for easier views. I soon found a 10" skywatcher Dob which delivered some beautiful views and started my venture into astrophotgraphy. Obviously that became immediately irritating on a manual dobsonian, however I got some nice pictures of Jupiter, Saturn, the Moon, The Sun, The triffid nebula and the lagoon nebula with a Canon 1200D. I then upgraded to a saxon 200mm on eq5, although as its over weight for the mount I have thus far been unable to get any decent pictures through it. I tried putting the 130p on the eq5, but as i live in Brisbane I haven't had a good trial of it yet due to the light pollution. I am looking at upgrading to a HEQ5 or EQ6 goto if I can find a good deal on one as I cant afford retail. and then will look at upgrading the scope to a more portable refractor.

Cheers for reading!

[bigjoe (JOSEPH)]

HI Tristan and welcome to IIS.

Astrophotography requires many hours and a steep learning curve; and yes it can be frustrating.

Most mounts like eq5 are really only suited to very short exposures and stacking them, and you really are going to have to learn to drift align on a good mount like the Heq5 or get software to assist,

A lot start with SW ED80 and EQ5/6 or similar.

There really are no shortcuts; you must invest a lot of time and money on a good mount etc.

Other posts here have mentioned how to do this.

Cheers bigjoe.