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Hi Michael
May I say welcome.
Wingham ...I spent my early years there..lived in the residence attacted to the Court House...that building ( no longer a Court House) next to the Police Station.
I hold hope that you can get your current scope to work and 900 mm fl is pretty handy.
I just purchased a new eq6 and have it now permanently mounted but what I noticed was with its handle it is rather easy to manage..and I am 74 (I think) with crook legs.
If you find you need another scope either the 6 or the 8 inch will keep you happy...don't be put off by talk that they require adjustment..it's easy.
Your camera will let you take 30 second exposures continuous and that works early on...I still do it in fact when I use my DSLR rather than my zwo camera..the advantage is you can just let it click away and 30 seconds won't show up a poor polar alignment..in fact it will give you a dithering effect..go for over 100..150 and cull out the crook ones and stack 120 really good ones..thats an hour.....Look into polar alignment as everything "turns" on having it perfect...one thing you can start doing is putting your camera on a tripod and taking long time exposures of the celestial South Pole...you will get an appreciation for where it is and get some nice star trail/ circle photos...there are many ways to align your mount to point at the CSP but remember this..whether your camera alone or thru your scope a time exposure is a great way to align your scope...your polar axis and scope need to be in line but once they are with your mount in home position a time exposure will show star circles..you get the center in frame and you are reasonably polar aligned...in time I would get a pole master..some say just use Sharpcap or other software but having a camera and system just for polar works well for me...but good polar is so much of the game...read up on it..I have perfect alignment and can take five minute exposures that look ok near the pole..say LMC or SMC...I tried Orion and it was passable but 3 minute would go unguided I expect.
When you get your mount spend time just using your camera (no scope) and whatever lens you have..wide fields are great and rewarding..plus polar alignment is not so critical..plus 30 sec captures stacked will surprise you.
Now you can do fine work with a DSLR but you may as well realise even now that you will want a dedicated astro camera...and probably want to auto guide so start putting away the cash...I am learning narrow band which is great particularly what you get with Ha..Martin's one shot colour zwo is tempting and I am wavering between a osc or another narrow band ( I want to run two imaging set ups) Narrow Band is time consuming but the results are not bad at all.
Get your mount and start with just the camera and any lens you have..mount it on a piece of ply or timber as that will work unless you have some alluminium you can fashion..as I did..but ply will work...bang out some 30 sec stuff, get Deep Sky Stacker and learnt how to do that..easy as...and get StarTools or at least Gimp..that should get you there.
Alex
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