Post by davy on May 1, 2016 15:09:19 GMT
My journey in astronomy..
Started looking at telescopes as a hobby as my partner carol was having health issues and didn't want to be far from her,so I thought about can computers be linked to control telescopes,,shurely nothing I could afford I thought,,a search on ebay and I found meade etx scopes,further searching I found cloudy nights forum,this is Christmas time 2010,I found a cheap etx80 being sold in glasgow and got it for about £120,,,wow a goto telescope,,this dinky thing was brilliant,,I found stargazers lounge in about june 2011 and found the video section,,boy was that place quiet back then,,I bought a philips webcam and fitted to the etx,,, fantastic..hooked..so I seen watec was a good cctv camera for astronomy as I wanted to see more and deeper sky objects,,on the bay again,,jumped feet first and bought a watec..I found out on sgl I bought a not so sensitive watec with no intregration,,bang £25 out of pocket,,that will teach me and it did...do the research and listen to folk my only excuse was it was early days and sgl video section was quiet,,so I read every bit of info on any website about video astronomy,I even went on to cctv sites looking at camera specs.
I got a cheap 8" newt on a manual eq3 mount and did a bit of video with the webcam,boy was it hard work manual guiding and that was only on the moon... next up was, my eq3 pro goto mount,,boy did I feel like thebees knees,, of course the 8" newt got fired on to it,,and we were doing great,, I bought a canon 400d,,mmmm I can fit this to the scope,so bought the t-ring and found this astrophotography isn't easy.
More reading on sgl and found the guys reference to ,,the bible,,, making every photon count,, by steve richards,,,,,, bought the book from first light optics and was sent two..I got an email from the author looking for one of them back,, this is now Christmas 2011 and due to post not getting through I got friendly with steve, steve took me under his wing and got me through the hard bits,, I bought the st102,,, but due to bad weather astrophotography was slow and boring and standing about in the freezing cold like a muppet wasn't for me,,I jumped back in to video and got right into it big time,,sgl was getting busy and info sharing was brilliant,,but along came the trouble from cloudy nights,,the fall out between mallincam and avs supporters and it was starting to spill out into sgl,, I had met ken,,dragonman on sgl and was friends with carl and karl ( video astronomy live) and johnno ,,I was getting fustrated with things and looked into building a dedicated video astronomy forum, a place where we could expand on a a sub forum to a full blown forum...three nights later the structure was done,I asked carl,karl,ken and johnno to come on board,, and we are in our second year,some have moved pn and enjoying success with astronomy broadcasting, this forum joined in a venture with mallincam but it was short lived as the support from mallincam didnt match what we required to make it a successful venture,we have now used our forum experience to help night skies network have a forum that we run in partnership.we have as a forum went our own way and look at ourselves as a family,we dont argue over stuff,we just offer help,we dont get sponsorship because we believe in telling it the way we see it,we dont vendor bash and welcome vendors here if it helps promote video astronomy,,where will we be in the next six years lol...my story in astronomy and the vaf
Started looking at telescopes as a hobby as my partner carol was having health issues and didn't want to be far from her,so I thought about can computers be linked to control telescopes,,shurely nothing I could afford I thought,,a search on ebay and I found meade etx scopes,further searching I found cloudy nights forum,this is Christmas time 2010,I found a cheap etx80 being sold in glasgow and got it for about £120,,,wow a goto telescope,,this dinky thing was brilliant,,I found stargazers lounge in about june 2011 and found the video section,,boy was that place quiet back then,,I bought a philips webcam and fitted to the etx,,, fantastic..hooked..so I seen watec was a good cctv camera for astronomy as I wanted to see more and deeper sky objects,,on the bay again,,jumped feet first and bought a watec..I found out on sgl I bought a not so sensitive watec with no intregration,,bang £25 out of pocket,,that will teach me and it did...do the research and listen to folk my only excuse was it was early days and sgl video section was quiet,,so I read every bit of info on any website about video astronomy,I even went on to cctv sites looking at camera specs.
I got a cheap 8" newt on a manual eq3 mount and did a bit of video with the webcam,boy was it hard work manual guiding and that was only on the moon... next up was, my eq3 pro goto mount,,boy did I feel like thebees knees,, of course the 8" newt got fired on to it,,and we were doing great,, I bought a canon 400d,,mmmm I can fit this to the scope,so bought the t-ring and found this astrophotography isn't easy.
More reading on sgl and found the guys reference to ,,the bible,,, making every photon count,, by steve richards,,,,,, bought the book from first light optics and was sent two..I got an email from the author looking for one of them back,, this is now Christmas 2011 and due to post not getting through I got friendly with steve, steve took me under his wing and got me through the hard bits,, I bought the st102,,, but due to bad weather astrophotography was slow and boring and standing about in the freezing cold like a muppet wasn't for me,,I jumped back in to video and got right into it big time,,sgl was getting busy and info sharing was brilliant,,but along came the trouble from cloudy nights,,the fall out between mallincam and avs supporters and it was starting to spill out into sgl,, I had met ken,,dragonman on sgl and was friends with carl and karl ( video astronomy live) and johnno ,,I was getting fustrated with things and looked into building a dedicated video astronomy forum, a place where we could expand on a a sub forum to a full blown forum...three nights later the structure was done,I asked carl,karl,ken and johnno to come on board,, and we are in our second year,some have moved pn and enjoying success with astronomy broadcasting, this forum joined in a venture with mallincam but it was short lived as the support from mallincam didnt match what we required to make it a successful venture,we have now used our forum experience to help night skies network have a forum that we run in partnership.we have as a forum went our own way and look at ourselves as a family,we dont argue over stuff,we just offer help,we dont get sponsorship because we believe in telling it the way we see it,we dont vendor bash and welcome vendors here if it helps promote video astronomy,,where will we be in the next six years lol...my story in astronomy and the vaf