Some Serious Advice
I'm going to assume you want to actually develop a fair level of proficiency at astrophotography. If that isn't the case this doesn't apply to you.
I'm going to assume you want to actually develop a fair level of proficiency at astrophotography. If that isn't the case this doesn't apply to you.
- A good mount is absolutely crucial. And unfortunately there are a lot of mounts advertised for astrophotography that are not very suitable if you want to go beyond the "It's recognizable" stage. Some of those mounts are excellent for visual but for astrophotography are purely sub-optimal. Here are a few I do recommend. The EQ5 (Orion Sirius), The EQ6 (Orion Atlas), Paramount (any), Astrophysics (Mach1 or better). The EQ5 is the least expensive mount I recommend and then only for very light loads (15 lbs or less).
- There is a lot of advice out there on places like Cloudy Nights. Most of it is written with good intentions. That doesn't make it good advice. If a person doesn't have a gallery of their images you can look at, ignore their advice. If their images suck, ignore their advice. There are a very few who are actually experts in some particular area. For example Alex McConahay wrote a book on using SGP. If you are so fortunate as to get advice from them, pay attention. Another example is Michael Covington who has written extensively about astrophotography.
- Sometimes there is more than one way to achieve success. For example, there are multiple data acquisition programs out there with successful imagers using them (Voyager, SGP, N.I.N.A. and TheSkyX Pro with Camera add-on come to mind). The same is true with data processing (Photoshop vs PixInsight). When starting out, my strong advice is to find a mentor, locally if possible, online if not, and then imitate them. Go to them for advice first. Follow it unless you have a really strong reason not to do so. You don't need to exactly mimic them (same mount, camera, telescope, etc.) but ask them for advice in those areas and then follow it.
- At first this is not about taking world class images. At first concentrate on learning. Figure out what is making your images suck, and then figure out (with the mentors advice) how to improve it.
- It often isn't the guitar, it is the player. Their is an expression in guitar circles that "The tone is in the fingers". Hand me Jimi Hendix's guitar and I won't sound like Hendix. If you handed him (back when he was alive) an at least adequate guitar, he would sound like Hendrix. I guarantee you that if you hand somebody new to this hobby world class data, they will turn it into hash. I've been doing this for over 7 years now and I'm still improving things like my image processing, or exactly how I focus, or how I allocate my time when taking images.
- This hobby can be expensive. And I've noticed something over the years. People will spend gobs of money on equipment (even when that isn't their problem), but they are very reluctant to spend money even on truly excellent software. Don't short-change yourself on the software side.
- Don't be too hard on yourself. Don't be too soft on yourself. Constantly look for ways to improve. Be realistic about where you are and where you want to be.
- I see a lot of imagers majoring on the minors. They are all about fixing some minor nit that you need to pixel-peep to see, when there is some obvious correctable flaw that is impeding their progress. For example, they may have some minor elongation of stars in the corner that they are striving to correct. Meanwhile, the color of their images is horrible, contrast is flat, dust donuts are everywhere.
- Calibrate your images properly. There are a few people who can get good images without doing so. They aren't to be emulated.