Forever a Newbie

[Hodur]

My level of incompetence at all things Astro is breathtaking. Some excellent gear lives in my garage a 5” triplet on a CGEM DX Mount, in most hands a killer combo.
In my defence the scope is used, atm it’s used quite a bit with Saturn and Jupiter being as bold as they are it’s awesome viewing, which brings me to the reason for the post.
The frequency of. “Astroing” went through the roof when I stopped being precise, when a good point towards south became sufficient. The more casual approach I’ve adopted necessitates dropping the mount out of gear and manually slewing. Not only is manual slewing quiet it’s also very fast.
If the complexity of “Astroing “ is preventing you from using your expensive gear (cheap gears expensive if you don’t use it) take your scope out with a star guide and a few lenses, you’ll be surprised how much fun, yes fun, you’ll have.
It’s easy to get way over complex, I know I’ll never be even a average astrophotographer so why bother? Doesn’t it just make more sense to enjoy your gear, your time and the night sky?
Ps your knowledge of the night sky improves dramatically with this back to basic s approach

[Tasaurora]

I’d like to add - just get out there...every time I go out I learn more and more - especially in regards to set up / constellations etc.

I’ve been wondering about Astro photos though - sorry if this is derailing - it seems that most people put their videos through a number of proofing apps and colour apps...that add / delete / change the images significantly. At what point does this become created animation rather than photography ?

[Imme]

If you’re working with wood to make furniture do your use sand paper and an oil to bring out the grain?

I think ‘polishing’ of data is acceptable.

[cometcatcher]

I need the complexity to keep me interested. I got bored with DSLR, so went mono cooled astro cam. Yes, I swear a lot at the gear now lol and I make mistakes more often. But the end results are more "creative".

By creative, I mean astro-processing isn't fake CGI. In processing, we never add anything that isn't already there, nor subtract something that should be there. Sure, the faint areas are lightened and the colour saturation increased, but those components are already there to start with.

[Tasaurora]

Agree - but if you take a photo of that wood, add in contrast, add/remove colour, pixelation adjustment, add in grain, remove grain...is it the same wood?
It’s the one thing that has thus far kept me from Astro photography - the irony being - without the polishing, the pictures are generally not that great lol.

[appiice]

Hello David

I would agree and relate part of my journey, I have a Celeston Edge1100 HD, For the first 2 years with it I really struggled to get it aligned ( it also did have a hardware problem that was eventually tracked down and fixed ).
Then I found NINA and forgot all about alignment, I have a set of stars that gets me close enough to the right part of the sky I think I am looking at, then I get NINA to do a plate solve of where it is point to to where it " thinks " it is point to, NINA then will slew tot he target and take another image and will plate solve that to confirm the coordinates and image agree. It is just so easy then to do what I enjoy rather than sweating on aligning the mount.
Ed