My first 12 months

[MattJenko]

I am rapidly approaching my first year anniversary of astronomy when I bought a Celestron 130EQ back in January 2014. I soon realised I wanted to give this a proper go, so in July treated myself for my 40th birthday to an HEQ5/ED80 and a 250PX for visual.

I have learnt a vast amount over the ensuing months and have an awful lot to thank this site for. Here is a selection of images, showing how much can be done from a standing start and some perseverance, enthusiasm and plenty of support from a very helpful community.

My first attempt at Andromeda and my second ever image attempt. I even managed to mess up adding the Astrobin Copyright overlay:

First ever long imaging run at my first ever star party at Kelling - non-guiding, 50 second subs, and a lot of them:

First guided effort after picking up a second hand ST80 and a borrowed guide cam and a second hand modded Canon 450D.

Things then picked up significantly and processing became the bottleneck.

My first Orion nebula was the turning point for me, when things started to come together. This is after many processing iterations and plentiful feedback from people here.

I then took the PixInsight plunge, and am a complete convert :

and my most recent (and favourite) :

Again - thanks to everyone here. You are a most helpful bunch, and I hope to repay the advice given by helping others and continuing to expand my skills + knowledge as I spend more money on ever more expensive pieces of hardware!

Happy new Year.

Matt

[dodge23]

Matt,

I think this was a great post, just thought i'd say as you've had no replies!!

[SW130p]

Great first 12 months, its mine too with a sw130p. must say your doing very well, I'm not even nowhere near as good as those. I have just built my own obsy so no excuse lol.

Well done.

[edjrgibbs]

Brilliant, way way better than my first 12 months! I'm about 5 years in and still struggle to get images like that. 

[mister_wavey]

Fabulous stuff!

[K3ny0n]

Brilliant, nice to see your progress. 

Rob.