Jump to content

Greetings from west yorkshire

nicks90

By nicks90
in Welcome

Recommended Posts

nicks90

nicks90

Posted
Posted

Hi everyone,

my name is Nick and i'm an acoholic :eek: oops, wrong forum! I'm an astronomy-n00b-aholic!!! thats better :grin:

I live in ossett, near wakefield in west yorkshire and have had an interest in physics and astronomy for many many years - but due to familly and other conflicts I have never had a chance to actually look up at the stars through a glass tube until now.

Recently i picked up a short tube 70mm F5.5 refracter on a rubbish little table top tripod to have a gander at the stars in my back garden and also when i;m out and about at places like Clumber park in the caravan. I was hooked immediately!

My first proper look at jupiter with 3 visible moons and neaarrrrrrrly picking up some banding had me thunderstruck! The bug has biten.

So i am now on the lookout for a nice telescope that will get me into astronomy a bit more and possibly do some photography too. After hours and hours of reading (whilst pretending to work) I have decided i want a nice mid range reflector telescope. However seconds before posting this i got sniped on ebay for a TAL1 :embarrassed: that would have been perfect and only set me back £50. Never mind, back to surfing preloved, gumtree and ebay again!

I'm really looking forward to meeting some of the members on here and possibly getting to a star gazing evening at some point - when i finally get a telescope that is!

My main interest is planets and the moon, but i would love to have a go at some DSOs - but from my garden the light pollution is probably too bad to pick out anything other than the odd smudge of andromeda... but we shall see when i finally get a scope thats worth sticking my eye too! As for the photography side of things, I;m a proper Yorkshireman, so it must be done on a budget of FREE! Therefore I will probably be disassembling a webcam and getting busy with bits of plastic tube and strip grips to cobble something together and then use a free stacking programme to see what i get.

clear skies!

Nick

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • Replies 32
  • Created
  • Last Reply
VigdisVZ

VigdisVZ

Posted
Posted

Hi Dr Nick!

And welcome to the forum, and to the dark side of society.

A mid range newton is a very good starting tube both for observing and photography, thats what I went for.

Unfortunately if you plan on doing it for free is that if you want to take photos you need an expensive mount, or have a degree in engineering to DIY. Everything dimmer than the moon (or possibly jupiter) requires a setup that tracks with the sky. You atleast the equal of a motorized Skywatcher EQ-3 mount, better yet an EQ5 or 6. As most astrophotographers will tell you, mount is everything, telescope is secondary.

So you need to figure out what your budget is, and if you want to make an investment now that is obsolete if you go for a real photography rig. You could also consider getting a scope now on a simpler mount, and saving for the EQ mount later on.

You should definetly grab you small telescope and go to a meeting or star party, where you can get a feel for what equipment people use and recommend. Astronomy is a superfriendly hobby, so just get out there and socialize.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
nicks90

nicks90

Posted
  • Author
Posted

many thanks for the warm welcome everyone!

Unfortunately if you plan on doing it for free is that if you want to take photos you need an expensive mount, or have a degree in engineering to DIY. Everything dimmer than the moon (or possibly jupiter) requires a setup that tracks with the sky. You atleast the equal of a motorized Skywatcher EQ-3 mount, better yet an EQ5 or 6. As most astrophotographers will tell you, mount is everything, telescope is secondary.

ooooh. was hoping for doing it the slightly laborious but simple way of a webcam attached to the eyepiece attached to my laptop/tablet and going "screengrab, screengrab. recentre planet, screengrab screengrab etc etc etc" until i had a good amount of grabs and then manually aligning and stacking them...

or am i being dim?

NIck

Link to comment
Share on other sites
VigdisVZ

VigdisVZ

Posted
Posted

ooooh. was hoping for doing it the slightly laborious but simple way of a webcam attached to the eyepiece attached to my laptop/tablet and going "screengrab, screengrab. recentre planet, screengrab screengrab etc etc etc" until i had a good amount of grabs and then manually aligning and stacking them...

or am i being dim?

That is doable ofcourse. Just set the camera to filming and let the programs stack the frames in the movie. If you're serious about AP you will probably want to move on from the brighter planets at some point. Also, consider that if you start increasing magnification, to get better pictures, you will pretty soon come to a point where Jupiter and friends rush out of the field of view very quick.

But it's absolutely not impossible to get results without motorization. Just as long as you're aware of the limitations. You could even try these techniques with your little refractor to get a feel for it.

If you get really bitten though, your fingers will start itching for a proper setup very soon, so try to look for equipment that wont get redundant.

Looking forward to see what images you come up with.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.