Hi Beau.
Just thought I’d quickly add a comment or 3.
Dunk and Ron have touched on the subject of training your eyes. After getting a few years in the hobby under my belt I can see what people mean by this. Just getting your eye in the right spot over the eyepiece in the dark can take some practice. What you see in the eyepiece is usually very small and / or faint and in the beginning I found it tricky just to keep my eye focused properly. Over time I noticed I was able to see more and more detail in what I was observing and it just became easier in general. Techniques such as averted vision also sometimes need to be used.
The best thing I found about all this is that it wasn’t something I had to be thinking about. It was simply a case of the more I observed, the easier it got.
I’m almost a purely visual observer (99.9%) and I found sketches a good way to get an idea for what I will see in the eyepiece.
Why let those photons that have traveled such a long way end up hitting a sensor rather than your own eye I say.
