Budding Star Gazer

This is going to usher in a new age of exploration & understanding, shame the hubble can't be serviced one last time with some new gizmos and a fuel payload to send it off to the same position.. Seems such a waste to just let it fall from the heavens.

The original observers app, have one myself and every year still buy the phillips annual observers guide book even though i have a host of smart apps on my phone.

When it comes to observing apature is king, as a noob myself if you can afford a larger reflector mirror then buy it, as for the go to side of things if you're not that confident in finding your way around the night sky there are plenty of point and find apps available for free on your phone that will easily replace the goto mount and get you looking in the right direction. You can even attach your phone to your scope so as you manually slew your scope the app on your phone will give you a live view of what's s in front of you. Some of the better apps even have a seach function that will guide you to your target. Save your money, buy the bigger mirror and use the apps to start with, i purchased they sky quest 10" from Orion based on this advice and am glad i didn't waste the money on the goto functions to start with. goto is not a bad thing if that is your preference, my reasons are not your reasons and always buy what you will be happy with & will get the most enjoyment from.

Yes the cloud cover i think will be my biggest obstacle to overcome, it's been like middle earth orc country for the last week here and I've been itching to get out.

I get the 2 minute plus frames for the deep sky stuff which will happen, my general idea is short through to long exposure so i hope to capture as much detail through the entire field of view or as much detail as possible. My hope is by putting in the time i will not have to sacrifice close to mid range detail for the deep sky detail in the back ground which although the primary focus of the idea will hopefully mean a sharper overall image. I would love to have a photo at the end that not many people have. I have been watching quite a lot of tutorials over a few years now and i figure if it can work for mr peach and the level of detail he gets on planetary objects it should work for deep field shots too. Of couse my budget is a fraction that used by mr peach for his marvellous shots so i have no images of grandure, i just figure if i am going to put a lot of time in i might as well go for broke. I have a ASUS tuf i7 10gb rtx card with 16gb ram for the processing, running W11. Fingers crossed!

Yes i will be doing some practical learning sessions before diving in but i have always found the best way to learn is just to get stuck in.. I expect failure to begin with so will not be deterred in any way.

Excellent shots with a cheapish camera & OTA, i was looking at the 130 myself but have decided to try the TAL-1, currently have one winging its way to me from ebay for £21 and am bidding on 2 more just to hedge my bets on the state of the mirrors. I have yet to decide on a larger tracking mount but my starter set will be the TAL-1 & a EOS 6D which so far is under £400, i have just recieved my sky watcher adventurer but dont think it will take the weight of the OTA.

I did quite a lot of reading myself before purchasing a camera, i ended up going for a canon EOS 6D, it seems to be a relatively good starting point that didn't break the bank (second hand £350) from WEX.

A good result for such little available light, i will be venturing in to my first imaging session soon (after some practice sessions) and was thinking about the regions that are bare. I know a dslr is a long way off from the Hubble but i do like the thought of capturing something that is hard to see. My thought process is a series of many nights mixing many short 2 sec and long 30 sec exposures and sifting through frame by frame removing the most usless images before stacking them in the hope of getting a good shot, i am new so i figure the best way to learn is to start with a difficult project and learn by my mistakes.

Yes thank you, i will have to give flo a ring and discuss.. Stange i didn't see this a few days ago, i spent ages on their site looking at all the goodies available when i ordered my star tracker.

Hello all, I have a 10"sky quest that I'd like to turn in to a goto, quite a few yeears back i see Orion were selling a set up but do not make it anymore. Anyone know of an off the shelf 10" dob goto mount i can purchase & retrofit the sky quest? I assume i am not the first to ask so a quick link to a thread if anyone knows one.. Cheers all.

Today the posty man mostly be bringing me a star adventurer 2i pro pack & a lot of excitement! This is the start of my astrophotography adventure, 1x used canon dslr camera.. Check. All the necessary trimmings.. Check. 1x star tracker.. Check. Some free donload software to stack & clean images.. Check. Waiting on the mount and i should be good to go for under £1k. Also waiting on a Tal-1 which cost me £21 plus postage to try & build a cheap deep sky set up...fingers crossed.

It's the UK, probably get clearer sky's while standing on jupiter looking at earth.

I have my own theory on dark matter, every ying has a yang, a positive & a negative. I think the reason dark matter is so elusive is because we have yet to discover the medium in which to view it, the known light spectrum i think has a mirror beyond what we can already see in either viable or invisible light. I think once we discover these new spectrums everything that is hidden will be illuminated. It must stand to reason if dark matter exists then so does dark energy, who is to say that when or if we reach a point when it becomes visable that this dark matter has not coalesced in to dark suns, words, solar system or even galaxies. May be the gaseous arms of our own milky way as we see it is not the full picture & when it is finally revealed in all its glory a few hundred billion sun's will become so much more. Crazy notion i know but i can dream.

Wow it's been a long time since I've been on here, got busy living and have recently found astronomy again. I have a dob which i fixed locking castors to, rubber shoed castor wheels with a locking arm set of 4 from any good supplier will cost you about £20, fix them direct to the base of the stand.