Beginners Guide

[AndrewRamsay]

For all you beginners out there....

I enjoyed a fascinating evening last night while Carole took me through her PowerPoint presentation "Beginners Guide to Imaging".  She is a mine of useful information about the "sport" - painfully acquired over many years.  I was especially grateful for the list of "don'ts", having myself already cut some expensive teeth in basic observational astronomy. 

Carole's presentation deserves a wider audience, but I feel sure she would be happy to copy the Slideshow to anyone wondering what is involved.

[Carole]

Thank you Andrew.  Bits of my presentation have previously been given at other sessions, though not in it's entirety.

Yes any-one wanting to get into Astrophotograhpy is welcome to an E Mail copy of the presentation.

Carol

[Mac]

Another quick read,

http://forum.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/index.php?topic=6334.0

[AndrewRamsay]

Excellent - thank you.  Especially the bit at the beginning about spending too much too soon.  I think I'll need to get the EQ mount first.

[Roy]

Andrew,

I don't know what telescope you've got but generally speaking the mount is more important than the telescope when it comes to imaging - I guess that's what Carole told you too.

Roy

[Carole]

I did.

Andrew has a Celestron Nexstar which is a nice scope, but not suitable for Long Exposure photography plus the scope is too slow and he does know this.  I told him he can do planetary with it, but I think he wants to do DS imaging.

Andrew asked me about Wedges, and I said that almost every-one I know who has used a wedged mount has eventually given up and gone for an Equatorial mount.

I have given him recommendations for retailers and where he can buy and sell second hand.

I've recommended a Skywatcher 130PDS which I have previously owned as he likes the price of it (as he was concerned about the overall cost) and seen what can be done with it, and is happy to do collimation.  Also recommended the HEQ5. 

I think he is going to look at a CMOS camera, so I have told him he needs to do his own research on that as I have no personal experience of them.  (I showed him some photos of Microlensing which I know some models suffer from). 

We also discussed guiding and dew heaters (he already has one), and calibration frames, and I showed him my light box. 

It was a lot for him to take in, but he's made a lot of notes and at least he won't be making any expensive mistakes.

I finally showed him my rig set up in the obsy.

Carole