Hi,
Another born-again hobby astronomer here. I got started in astronomy in the last century, and pursued it for 20 years, but then got bored and couldn't be bothered lugging around all the gear so packed it up 10 years ago. Dabbled in astrophotograhy a bit, modified a DSLR, and bought a horribly expensive SBIG camera but my real interest was spectroscopy, which gave me many happy nights. What really killed it for me in the end, was I was doing very little observing and a lot of computer processing.
Then, on a whim, I bought a Seestar S50 and OMG, as my kids say, it completely reignited my love of the sport. Three-minute setup, clockwise and anti-clockwise compass calibration and level to 1mm, and I can retire to the sofa. What used to be a rather lonely and solitary hobby now has the whole family involved, even my wife looks on with interest as the image emerges on my phone. It was an absolute revelation, I've included some pictures, processed either in the S50 or on my phone. These were taken on a recent family holiday to Spain, where I chucked the S50 into my luggage. I was astonished by what my little 'toy' could do with almost no effort on my part, and seeing what others achieve with more subs and more processing effort is amazing.
So I looked into it a bit more and discovered that you could recreate an S50-like experience with 'real' astronomy equipment. Hooked at that point, my first thought was to do solar, so I enquired about a Lunt and an ASI533MM, luckily for me they were out of stock. As I poked about a bit more, I discovered the Sol'ex/Star'ex project, which having assembled Heath Robinson spectroscopes in the past, looked right up my street. I ordered an ASIAir Plus from those lovely people at FLO and the parts to build a Sol'ex. I picked up a second-hand ASI678MC Planetary camera locally, which I will use 2x2 binned for general use as its pixels are a bit small. I also managed to pick up a very old ASI120 for a few ££. At that point, my son and I went hunting about the garage, attic and storage unit to collect all the astronomy equipment we could find, we ended up with:
CGE mount - (No thank you, too heavy, staying where it is)
C9.25 Cat - (Ditto above)
iOptron ZEQ25GT - (That will do nicely)
Takahashi FS102 - (The only thing that comes between me and my wife as I hug it to slip into contented slumber)
Orion ED80 - (An original, bought from the Orion store in San Jose almost a lifetime ago, but at some point I did upgrade to a TS focuser)
Lacerta ED72/430 - (Nope, no clue where that came from, must have been one of the last things I bought!)
Pentax 105 ED HF - (Bit of a barn find, my daughter and I spent an afternoon stripping it down, cleaning the mouse droppings and extracting all the dust. It has an internal field flattener so it helped to have a helper with small hands to do the cleaning)
After sorting through all the accessories, I spent the only clear night setting up, getting the main and guide cameras into focus, manually polar aligning and then refining it with the ASIAir. I was able to connect the mount and both cameras to the ASIAir, so all I need is an EAF to get the S50 experience. I seem to be over-refractored at the moment, so I think I will pick up a 152 Mak and focus on planetary and lunar with the ED72 for solar spectroscopy, and then see where life takes me. I don't mind stacking planetary videos and taking spectra but I don't want to get stuck into the processing doom-loop that goes with deep-sky. I quite fancy doing a mineral moon project over the winter as well.
One change I have noticed is that YouTube is full of young people who have this hobby nailed down and are happy to share their knowledge! There is so much information freely available now on getting started, or re-started in my case.
So, that's my story, I look forward to starting a new astronomy chapter.
