Deep-SKay-Astrophotography

Since I was a kid, I was interested in space, our solar system, and all the pretty Hubble pictures, but I never really cared about having my own equipment. During the Covid lockdowns in 2020 when everything was shut down, I decided that it would be cool to buy a telescope (Newtonian F7) to watch the planets, the Moon, the Orion nebula and maybe some comets.

The results were a bit disillusioning: the Moon was quite ok, the planets really small and the nebulas were not as quarter as good as seen in the famous Hubble images. So the idea was born to take my own pictures and get at least some colorful images of these black and white objects you see in the telescope.

I heard that you could do simple astrophotography with a small star tracker and just a camera. I already owned a Sony Alpha 6000, so I took my first images with a rather simple setup. Meanwhile I learned about stacking, calibration frames and astromodification, and step by step my image quality was increasing.  That was when the addiction started.

Later I bought a real mount and a better telescope (Redcat APO) because the cheap one from the beginning was not suitable, and I wanted to have more focal length. I dealt with autoguiding, dithering, filters etc. to improve my skills.

Now I am starting to get used to my new F4 600 mm newtonian telescope and hope to get nice pictures out of it.

Clear Skies!

Kay