About Me

Hi and welcome to my astronomy pages. This is a little about how I ended up in this amazing hobby and how I ended up building my own observatory in my garden So here`s  my journey to this amazing hobby. In late 2019 after the dreaded Covid and various lockdowns and not being able to go on holidays and the usual things you do throughout the year. I found myself in a position to finally take the plunge into Astrophotography and WOW what a hobby. From an early age I have always been fascinated by sci-fiction and the stars and always dreamed of being able to look at the stars and the planets through a telescope. I even have a Velux window in my bedroom where on clear nights I can see the stars.

So in October of 2019 I took the plunge into this hobby and bought my first telescope a Celestron Evolution Edge 8HD along with some eye pieces to be able to view the moon and various other planets. After finally getting the setup right my first view of the moon close up was just mind blowing of the detail that could be seen through the eye piece. This first encounter with a celestial object had me hooked. From that point on I decided to image these through the telescope. So started a long exploration on the internet on how to achieve this finally getting to a point where I was able to attach my Canon DSLR to the telescope. And using my laptop was finally able to image the moon for the first time. I must have been extremely lucky as my first images where just simply amazing once they had be stitched all together through software. The image is here on this site under the moon section.

I soon realised this was just the tip of what could be achieved and after my searches on the internet found that images of Stars, Galaxie`s and Nebulas could be achieved through the telescope. Soon realising the mount that came with the Celestron was not up to what was needed for me to progress my astrophotography further. So late in December I ordered a Celestron AVX mount and guide scope SKY Watcher 50ED guide scope which would enable me to track the skies. With Canon installed and computer turned on I started to find targets in the sky to photograph and the first target was M42 Orion Nebula. Once again got lucky with the images taken and really took my experience to another level. After a few months, decided that I needed to photograph the sky wide angle and purchased a purpose use camera a ZWO ASI 533mc pro colour camera and a  new telescope a William Optics Redcat 51(personally every astronomy who wants to do astrophotography should have this in their collection). While the imaging really started my progression I soon realized that mono photography with filters was the way forward for detail images and flexability to combine in software. With this knowledge I purchased a ZWO ASI  6200mm pro with filters of LRGB, HA,OII,SII and Lum.

Not long after this the realization of having to take down my equipment every evening meant that I was losing valuable imaging time and soon promptly decided to build my own observatory in my garden. In 2022 a more permanent building will be built that will house 3 telescopes all setup to either image the sky or view planets through the eye piece. After finally retiring to enjoy my life, i finally have a hobby that is rewarding and never ending like the SKIES. And big thankyou to the astronomy community, and those that do the tutorials on how to process the data. To those that do the testing of new products. I learnt real quick that what you may think is a silly question will always be replied with an answer to solve that question from the community.

I like to process my images in the Hubble Palette SHO, and generally like to use HA as a luminace to make my images pop. I use a combination of Pixinsight with Photoshop to produce the final images. The learning curve for Pixinsight is great but does reward you once you have the hang of the software, and the many windows within.

My final thought is that life is to short not to follow your dreams, and not least  want to thank my Wife who has allowed me to spend a small fortune to realize a long life dream.

Clear Skies 

 

 

Recent Images