27/03/23-07/04/23

So the first scope I got was an old Alt AZ, Prinz astral 400 refractor with 60mm aperture and 700mm focal length from the 1970s, which I was gifted by my grandpa as it was just collecting dust in his house, and I gladly accepted. For the first 2 months, it just sort of stayed in my room as a novelty so I could look over the valley in which I live (left picture), until one day I decided to look upwards into the sky, and I saw the moon. What followed, which is what I’m guessing most new amateur astronomers do, is just stand there with your mouth wide open in awe. At that moment, I was hooked, and I still have it now. About a week later, I got an adapter for my phone and a 25mm 1.25″ eyepiece and an adapter to fit the 0.925″ form factor. The first picture I took was the one with the moon (middle one on march 2023), and I guess that was my first Astro photo (with many more to come). Then, about another week later, I took it up to a field where I usually walk my dogs (right picture), and that felt like a massive step, and I was so looking forward to it. Unfortunately, all I got was some out-of-focus stars, but I still got some nice pictures of the telescope itself so I stuck with the moon but then you get the inevitable feeling of wanting more photons sooooo……

7/04/23 – 21/06/23

I bought on Amazon for £230 probably the most popular telescope there is, the AstroMaster 130 EQ with the motor drive. It is a 130mm aperture, 500mm focal length Newtonian, and was the first reflector I ever got, so I was pretty worried about collimation. It all worked out fine. This is probably the telescope that I used the most (except the one I have now), as I used it for the majority of my first year of astrophotography. As you can see, I could finally get some decent pictures of the moon, Venus, and a very grainy Hercules globular cluster. I even decided to make a homemade solar filter and slap it on like it’s a dew shield. The bottom right picture shows the 130 and the Prinz Astral together with my friend’s telescope, as he was staying round at mine, and I can’t lie, I felt like a boss. The bottom left picture is actually the first picture I took of it, as you can still see the wrapping and packaging of the scope in the background, and I cannot tell you how happy I was to see that big box at the door. Even though I couldn’t take long exposures with this scope and my iPhone X, I kept on using it non-stop to take pictures for about six months until…

21/06/23 – 28/06/23

I got my first electronic mount which was a bundle and it was a Nexstar 102 SLT from which I put the OTA from my Astro master onto the electronic mount and I put the refractor on the manual equatorial and then after a while I sold it as I wasn’t using it because I found the chromatic aberration was quite annoying. This setup allowed me finally to take some long exposures with my phone as you can see I got some pictures of bright galaxies and the quality of the Hercules cluster looks a lot better. I used this literally for less then a week until something insane happened….

My grandma (we call her Nanny Sanny) gave me some money to by a full big telescope so I bought this scope and then on the 09/12/23 she bought me an observatory too

My current setup:

Observatory: pulsar 2.2m full height

Bortle: 4

Mount: Celestron CGEM – Computerised German equatorial mount.

OTA: Sky Watcher 200p –

200mm aperture

1000mm focal length (f/5)

Camera:

Main – ASI2600MC-PRO (before 10/09/24 I was using an SV705C)

Guide scope – Svbony 60mm + ASI120mm

Auto Focuser: ZWO EAF

Filters:

Ha and OIII – Optolong L-eXtreme (for new ASI camera), for sv705c I used a random unbranded 7nm filter

Software: Stellarium for scope guiding, sharpcap for capturing, siril and pixinsight for editing, phd2