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, not being able to go on holidays, and missing out on 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 science fiction and the stars, and I always dreamed of being able to look at 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 eyepieces to be able to view the moon and various planets. After finally getting the setup right, my first close-up view of the moon was just mind-blowing because of the level of detail that could be seen through the eyepiece. This first encounter with a celestial object had me hooked. From that point on, I decided to image them through the telescope. So began a long exploration on the internet to learn how to achieve this, finally getting to a point where I was able to attach my Canon DSLR to the telescope. Using my laptop, I was finally able to image the moon for the first time. I must have been extremely lucky, as my first images were just simply amazing once they had been 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. Through my searches on the internet, I found that images of stars, galaxies, and nebulae could be captured through the telescope. I quickly realised 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 a Sky-Watcher 50ED guide scope, which would enable me to track the skies. With the Canon installed and the computer turned on, I started to find targets in the sky to photograph, and my first target was the M42 Orion Nebula. Once again, I got lucky with the images taken, which really took my experience to another level.
After a few months, I decided that I needed to photograph the sky at a wide angle and purchased a purpose-built camera—a ZWO ASI 533MC Pro colour camera—and a new telescope, a William Optics RedCat 51 (personally, every astronomer who wants to do astrophotography should have this in their collection). While this gear really started my progression, I soon realised that mono photography with filters was the way forward for detailed images and the flexibility to combine them in software. With this knowledge, I purchased a ZWO ASI 6200MM Pro with LRGB, Ha, OIII, and SII filters.
Not long after this, the realisation of having to take down my equipment every evening meant that I was losing valuable imaging time, so I promptly decided to build my own observatory in my garden. In 2022, a more permanent building will be built that will house three telescopes, all set up to either image the sky or view planets through the eyepiece. After finally retiring to enjoy my life, I finally have a hobby that is rewarding and never-ending—just like the skies. I also want to extend a big thank you to the astronomy community, especially those who create tutorials on how to process data and those who test new products. I learnt very quickly that what you may think is a silly question will always be met with a helpful answer from the community to solve your problem.
I like to process my images in the Hubble Palette (SHO), and I generally like to use Ha as a Luminance layer to make my images pop. I use a combination of PixInsight and Photoshop to produce the final images. The learning curve for PixInsight is steep, but it rewards you once you have the hang of the software and its many processes.
Feel free to check out the equipment page to see my current bits and pieces.
My final thought is that life is too short not to follow your dreams. Last but certainly not least, I want to thank my wife, who has allowed me to spend a small fortune to realise a lifelong dream.
Clear Skies