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What drives you to image?

richyrich_one

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richyrich_one

richyrich_one

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Its nice to show the wife... She's indoors telling me its too cold :-)

I see you have the Celestron X-Cel LX eyepieces and the same scope as me.

I was thinking of getting some at some point to upgrade the stock ones. How do you find them?

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Carina Lass

Carina Lass

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I think it makes for a better record of what is out there . Also, I am a technical person and the techniques for ap make it a challenge too. I suppose I like the toys too and orchestrating them to produce a decent result.

The fact that digital has opened up such a wonderful opportunity for my own picture library mostly unlike anyone else's is another facet.

My very first picture was taken with a pocket camera through the eyepiece and I was hooked straight away. The picture was at least as good as any I had seen in a book.

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richyrich_one

richyrich_one

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I think it makes for a better record of what is out there . Also, I am a technical person and the techniques for ap make it a challenge too. I suppose I like the toys too and orchestrating them to produce a decent result.

The fact that digital has opened up such a wonderful opportunity for my own picture library mostly unlike anyone else's is another facet.

Absolutely!

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richyrich_one

richyrich_one

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Watch COSMOS a few times and you will know. A telescope is a time machine.

Never seen Cosmos (yet).

The whole "looking at something that might not be there anymore" is a good one. And to have picture of something millions of years old...pretty incredible.

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richyrich_one

richyrich_one

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my sketching ability is truly abysmal ! i love having a record of what i have been observing. also if i had no mountain of data to process what would i do on the "rare" cloudy nights we get in Bedfordshire.

It does seem like the perfect avenue of astronomy for the UK, plenty to do when it's raining.

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ChrisLX200

ChrisLX200

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My eyesight is not as good as it was (understatement) so imaging is a way of capturing what I would otherwise have difficulty seeing visually. Plus, the camera goes much deeper, and the colours are revealed. Instead of trying to describe to someone else what you see through a telescope you can actually show them, and it's a permanent record of some scientific value (think of all the pre-discovery images of M82 SN2014J there are). In fact I have never looked through my new 5" refractor, not even for alignment purposes (I use the Pronto guider for that), it's never even had an eyepiece in it at all :)

ChrisH

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hobsey

hobsey

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I'm a long way from it yet but I know that's where I want to go.

I'm with you on this one, I'm just getting the gear together then hopefully I will be starting in a couple of weeks.

Going in blind, really don't know what I'm doing but its a big learning curve.

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DoctorD

DoctorD

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Hi

I started with video astronomy as a way of combatting light pollution at home given the restricted opportunities to observe due to work and family commitments. I had little opportunity to get away to darker skies so had to make do with the location I had on my doorstep. I invested in an iOptron Minitower, wanting a mount with the ease of set-up, but also wanting to avoid polar alignment and extended set up time of an EQ mount. My camera was only capable of 10s exposures so field rotation would not be a problem.

Even using a modest Samsung security camera I managed to "see" much more than I could visually of the brighter messier objects and inevitably started to capture some of these images to show to friends.

I work away from home quite a bit, and living out of hotels gives me the opportunity to dabble with processing of the data and inevitably I wanted better data so my partner bought me a Lodestar-C and my plan was to use it like a video camera in short exposures given that my sky glow would limit the length of exposures. I use Lodestar Live developed by Paul81 and can "see" even better than when using my Samsung, however I quickly found that I wanted to try longer exposures - the Minitower was good for up to 30 seconds before field rotation began to spoil the image and I have achieved quite a lot with this, however I wanted more.

So recently I sold my Minitower and bought a second hand HEQ5 pro (call it fate, someone advertised looking for a Minitower at the same time someone advertised a HEQ5 - all within 45 minutes of where I live) - I'm just waiting for the opportunity to find out how difficult polar alignment really is as it seems to be cloudy when ever I'm at home since I got the new gear!

My primary aim will still be near real time imaging - Lodestar Live is a tremendous application allowing realtime processing of data as it arrives and will continue to get better as Paul81 adds more and more features. However I will now be able to push the exposures even further and will have better data to play with when I'm away from home.

I'm sure it's only a matter of time before I add a guider and my transition to the dark side will be complete!!

Clear skies

Paul

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JamesF

JamesF

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I've got a business to run, a mortgage to pay, kids to get through school, a money-pit of a house, animals to look after, in-laws in the "granny-annexe"...

I thought life was just getting a bit too easy... :D

James

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Zakalwe

Zakalwe

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For me its a few things. I find visual observing a total waste of precious clear skies. My eyes struggle to make out the merest hint of what a DSO object looks like* and all I can think of is how much better it would be to have a camera on the scope instead of crummy wetware eyes. Hell for me would be endless clear skies and only being allowed a Dobsonian....

I like the technical challenge of assembling the kit and getting it all to work. My inner geek loves the trickery involved in getting countless USB leads, power supplies, cameras, focusers etc all working together. I can spend hours messing with the equipment, and probably get as much enjoyment from getting it all "fettled" as I do from using it (given our abysmal weather this is a Good Thing!)

I love seeing the detail emerge from the data. I love seeing the detail "pop" when Registax wavelets are applied (the "Do All" button is a magical thing!). Or when you copy the original layer in Photoshop over the finished image and toggle visibility on and off.  Its a real "Wow...did I create this from THAT!!!"

Finally, seeing DSO images in all their glory fascinates me. I have a 40" version of this image mounted on my kitchen wall:

13713251985_13a090f19d_m.jpg

it gives me pleasure to look at it and imagine if there's some sort of life-form in Andromeda with an image of the Milky Way on his/her/it's wall wondering if there's life over there. :grin:

*I exclude Lunar observing from this. I can spend a while looking at the details in the Moon.

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knobby

knobby

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I see you have the Celestron X-Cel LX eyepieces and the same scope as me.

I was thinking of getting some at some point to upgrade the stock ones. How do you find them?

the lxs are nice in the 250... A bit iffy at the edges but far better than the stock ones.

great thread by the way. I always swore blind I couldn't be doing with faffing about setting up cameras and polar aligning, but it gradually bites :-)

gone from a 250 dob for purely visual to a C8 edge / avx mount for webcam planetary in a few years :-)

also dabbled with M13 and M57 attempts :-) its catching...

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DaveS

DaveS

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Pretty much with the other replies here. I like to have something tangible after I come in from the 'scope and my drawing skills are abysmal. Besides which the old mk1 eyeball just doesn't cut it for DSOs, certainly compared with a cooled CCD and NB filters.

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r3i

r3i

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Pretty much the same as everyone else:

  • One grey fuzzy blob was beginning to look like another and age has made my eyesight not as acute as it once was
  • The technical challenges of integrating all the gear & software together and the many opportunities for continuous improvement.  There's always more to learn.
  • Processing the images gives you something to do on those frequent cloudy nights
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