Aim high. You just might get there.

[Weltevreden SA (Dana)]

Here's a note of encouragement to AP'ers in general and beginners in particular. Some people think that amateurs and their equipment are too elementary to make contributions to the science. Wrong. Here's a link to a paper just published <http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.04222> that used a Canon camera body with 85mm and 200mm lenses to record very wide images of the Magellanic galaxies in the southern hemisphere. It's a heavy-duty technical paper so spare yourself the bewilderment by reading the Abstract and Section 2, especially the top portion of p. 3. Then look at the results in Figs 1 & 2 on p.5.

The text is a bit skimpy on just how the images were calculated, taken, and processed. But the point here is that the kind of equipment we can afford does indeed have a place in contributing valuable science. It's a long stretch between this forum and the pages of a professional paper, but if we pay a bit of attention to what the professionals are doing, there are holes in their range of equipment that our off-the-shelf SLRs can fill. In the case of the above paper, it was very wide field views taken to reach the 14th stellar magnitude. The scientists were not after the star images but rather subtly glowing gas and thin bands of dark obscuration called Galactic cirrus. Only a fast lens with a very wide field could capture them. Exactly the kind of camera we use to take pics of the kids splashing around in the pool.

[Atmos (Colin)]

Haven't read all of the paper yet but as for the technical details for those who are interested. It was conducted in 2009 from ESO La Sillia observatory. An SBIG STL-11000M was used with a Canon EF 50mm F/1.4 USM & Canon EF 200mm F/2.8L USM, and Baader LRGB filters.

300s L exposures were used with the 200mm and 600s with the 50mm. Some of the deeper areas that they were imaging had a flux of 28 mag/arcsec^2 so pretty dim That was with the 50mm, they reached approx 27 mag/arcsec^2 with the 200mm which is comparable to the depth of the 2MASS project.

Planning on making my way through the paper as the day progresses

[bojan]

Yes, expensive equipment doesn't automatically mean science...
With common equipment like this it is possible to search for exoplanets as well. A friend of mine was into this couple of years ago, he was succesful confirming two transients if my memory serves me well.
If confirmation is possible, so is discovery.