Back to learning the sky…
I already owned cameras and tripods, plus a pair of 8x56 binoculars. Stellarium was a free download. That could have kept me going for months if not years with no further expense. But where’s the fun in that?
And I don’t have years - my eyesight is already fading quite rapidly - so buying a telescope fairly quickly was inevitable. I bought a basic 80x400 SkyWatcher refractor on an Alt-Az mount for around $300 and went outside night after night for the first two months and began the journey. We live in the bush and have good skies with low light pollution, so conditions were very favourable. Only the onset of winter clouds and rain slowed me down.
I also then bought some books (Turn Left at Orion, Cosmos by Carl Sagan, and The Southern Sky Guide, etc). Plus various collections of charts - one in book form and a number of printable collections. But I found the charts of very little use. Not because they weren’t good, they were, but they just didn’t feel comfortable to work with. I guess we’re all different. By contrast, Stellarium and SkySafari 5 give me all the information that I need in a format that I enjoy using.
I noticed that in your first post you recommended that I “read a few astronomy books and study SkySafari” before going outside, and now you’re recommending that I “get your nose out of camera/computer screens and spend quality time outside under a dark sky. Regularly.” Clearly you like having a bet each way! But as I’ve been doing some of both I don’t think there’s much to argue about there.
I also downloaded (from here) Suzy’s list of Highlights of The Winter Sky and have now been able to view about half of them in the areas that I’ve been gradually learning. So that has helped keep interest and motivation up too. Thanks again to Suzy.
So that’s where I’m up to now. I have added more gear and my most used combination is now a 150x750 Newtonian with the original 80x400 mounted on top. It gives me flexibility in the one package and allows me to put a camera on either one or the other and take reference pictures at the same time that I’m viewing through the other one. I now have other options to back it up, but the main learning path still heavily relies on the little refractor. It usually goes - binoculars and/or SkySafari first, then the biggest chunk of exploring using the little refractor, eventually followed by a closer look through something more powerful.
And taking some more happy snaps of the terrritory along the way is a regular part of it. I’m certainly not going to stop taking pictures, because I find them to be both useful tools plus a good record of the journey. There’s no particular need for high quality pictures for either use, but it would go against the grain not to be using the opportunity to improve the photos along the way.
Each to his own I guess,
Cheers,
Chris