Laguna Nebula, first shot
It is my first shot with my first equipment. I started astrophotography with my APN Canon EOS 550D attached to the Schmidt-Cassegrain C9 with an AltAz mount. Definitively not the mount adequate for astrophotography. I made a big mistake assuming that my main focus would be stargazing.
I just got my Celestron 9”25 Evolution. Seeing for the first time Jupiter and Saturn was overwhelming. It is crazy, I knew these planets exist and saw a lot of pictures … but getting the very personal view through oculars is something like a shock ! Gosh, they are there and they are beautiful. I quickly order a secured bag in order to travel with this equipment, believing that the sky in Sardegna would have been awesome. It was awesome, and in my very first steps on handling this telescope, I brought my APN APS-C Canon EOS550D cause I ordered the T2 ring to connect it to the telescope.
I bought a software (Affinity) so I would try to pile the shots I would take. Tough, to manage a new equipment and try to understand the software … really tough. You can see my very first shot, and I was so excited to get the red-ish spot !
After this shot, I went through a lot of frustrations for a couple of months, between bad weather and lack of knowledge about my Celestron, with some very intensive learning I learnt that this hobby was a complex mix of mechanic (i.e. backlash from the mount), optics (i.e. focal length vs F/D), electronic (i.e. polar or only stars alignement), physics (i.e. try to balance a tube on a one-arm mount when you have a lot of imaging equipment on it), chemistry (i.e. type of nebula or galaxy or star about the gas expelled to catch with your camera) and electronics again (i.e. to understand the camera specifics such as noises or pixel size) … a lot of fun that can bring a lot of frustrations. I got two friendly supports : the first one is the unexpected encounters as I quite always shot in the middle of nowhere with wild animals around me and these encounters always have been incredible moments. Second is the piece of patience I found in myself while I’m not this person at all and used to overcut most steps in my life. An important thing : don’t give up. At some point I joined an astronomy club for help, the first sentence I got was : ”yeah, but did you use a bathinov mask ?” … and it changed my nights ! (by the way, I draw this mask on a paper and cut the lines with a scalpel … still using it, and my focus are quite always good since then, except when my focus is changing during the night because of temperature drop)
Finally, there is one question that is asked when you want you first telescope. (well, not only one but I’ll focus on this one for this post, there will be other posts about the other questions). Altitude-Azimutal Mount or Equatorial Mount ? They will tell you that it depends if you want to stargaze or if you want to shoot astro-pictures … it will be my first advice to you : understanding well that AltAz mounts are great for stargazing but can’t really help you on astrophotography while the Equatorial is perfect for astrophotography but you can also stargaze (even smoother than with an AltAz mount). Equatorial mounts require a bit of knowledge (not a complex one, but you need to admit that the Earth is round …) and it is really the only mount I would recommend (except if you have budget issues for your first acquisition)
