Joebob

Thanks both, some great advice. Sounds like with my setup it shouldn't be too much of a worry as it sounds like I am more limited my the performance of my setup. All the excuse I need to get out there tonight!

Hi all, It appears that the clouds may part long enough this evening to actually see some stars in my neck of the woods, for the first time in quite a while! Looking at the weather forecast in Telescopius seeing will be "Bad", having first acquainted myself with what astronomical seeing actually is, I am trying to gauge what this means for any AP undertakings tonight. Is it generally considered not worth it to go out and take a big amount of photos if the quality is going to be terrible? I don't suppose there any precautions you can take to reduce the effects of seeing, e.g. shorter subs? My completely uneducated guess would be that any atmospheric pertubations etc would be on much smaller timescales than would be useful for taking subs so that seems unlikely, but as I said, that's a completely uneducated guess. If it is generally not worth it, do you have anything that you generally do when the clouds clear but seeing is less than favourable? I am still new to all of this, so I may just set it all up and have a bit of a play around even if not to take any serious shots for the night. Thanks!

Nice setup, I need to get one of those lasers, may I ask where you got this one from?

Hi, welcome!

A local! Great to hear! thanks for the welcome. Thanks to all for the kind welcome, looking forward to chatting with you all in the future!

The Zeiss has been my preferred lens, I don't really have any experience to comment on its quality, but it's keeping me happy for now. How do you find the Skywatcher AZ GTI? I was considering it also, even put some bids in on a second hand one on ebay. I ended up with the SA in the end but wish I had a goto mount, looks really cool.

Thanks for the welcome. As for Equipment, I'm just starting out, so have mostly been using what I had around the house: Canon 450D (unmodded) - considering trying the mod myself at some stage but am happy to leave as is for now. Canon 50mm f1.8 Lens, Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar MC 135mm, f3.5 An old Manfrotto DSLR tripod Skywatcher Star Adventurer 2i (My main purchase thus far) Skywatcher Evostar 90 (with EQ2 mount) which was gifted to me, has not seen too much action apart from a couple of nights staring at the moon! As far as software is concerned, I have been playing around with DSS, Siril and Gimp but post processing is definitely an area for improvement. I've also installed Astroberry on a RPi 4 and had a bit of a look, but not used properly yet, I think that's a future project. And that's about it apart from some odds and ends. I've been resisting the urge to throw large amounts of money at it, and have decided to try and focus on what I can get out of the equipment I have for now.

Hi All, I have been a bit of a lurker on this very resourceful forum for a few months whilst getting aquainted with my new hobby and decided I should properly register and say hello! I am still quite new to both observing and AP (AP is probably my main focus at the moment) As a Mechanical Engineer by trade the technically challenging aspects of this hobby have been particularly interesting, so much to learn and such a great amount of knowledge on this board, so a big thanks! My current attempts at AP have been laughable, but with every failed attempt there is a slight improvement and lessons learnt, so looking forward to more clear skies!