Hi all - this is sort of a followup question on my poll on "what's your astro thing"
looking at the results I wondered how much people's "thing" was influenced by passion and how much by more practical concerns such as location, free time (read family situation), technology development and cost of different technologies?
for example, when I first got into astronomy I was young, single, poor, and unencumbered and lived on a farm on the outskirts of Brissie with reasonably dark skies and my passion was deep sky... hands down. Spin on 20 years, 3 kids, high pressure long hours job, living surrounded by townhouses, light pollution etc, and now for me it is planetary imaging, no question.
why?.... I still would love to do deep sky, but my current situation only allows for small snatches of observing time under light polluted skies. Then there is the technology cost aspects, planetary imaging of the standard possible wasn't possible in the past and I probably couldn't afford the gear needed back then anyway - making big newtonians by hands however, allowed me to do deep sky.
anyone else feel there hobby is guided more by such practicalities or are you all passion first and damn the torpedos?
cheers