claytonsummers Loc: Orange County, CA

First time getting the new telescope out into the field. Not bad for light polluted Southern California. Roughly an hour of integration (~60 exposures at 60 seconds each) and a couple of evenings post processing in Pixinsight and Photoshop.

For those familiar with the Ortega highway (74), This was taken across the highway from the Candy Store.

(Download)

claytonsummers Loc: Orange County, CA

Gear:

Telescope: Orion 115mm apochromatic Triplet (800mm Focal length with .8x field flattener)
Camera: Standard Nikon D750
Mount: Sky Watcher EQ6-R Pro
ZWO autofocuser
ZWO guiding camera and 80mm guide scope

Captured with NINA (PHD2 guiding)

Juy Loc: Delaware

Wow , that is nice

SkyKing Loc: Thompson Ridge, NY

…in a galaxy far, far, away…? Excellent work…!

alberio Loc: Casa Grande AZ

M101 has always been one I like to image, but never got a good one. You captured it nicely including a couple others. Good work.

claytonsummers Loc: Orange County, CA

Thanks, this was my third processing run. Pixinsight has quite the learning curve but can do amazing things.

DougS Loc: Central Arkansas

Interesting, amazing, and wonderful!

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

Nice one!

bwa

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Nice shot. The supernova is still going strong.

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

Nice work, Clayton.
I going to have to try that to get a shot of the Supernova.

nervous2 Loc: Provo, Utah

Wow! I've gotta figure a way to get into this kind of photography. How would a newbie even start?

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

Hold that thought, I'll get back to ya.

stepping beyond Loc: usa eastcoast

Nice indeed , what a catch!

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

Hi Nervous2,
I got hooked on this Astrophotography after I got my first view of The Great Orion Nebula one winters eve, through my spotting scope. Holy Moly! I actually found something, tiny, but I found it!
Then I tried taking pictures through the scope with my cell phone camera.
Then I was out there trying to focus on the Moon. And using my D3300 with my Tamron 150-600mm TelePhoto lens.
But I realized I needed a real telescope to pursue this insanity. I believe that was December 2013....

First thing my drooling mouth and bloodshot eyes globbed onto was a Celestron Refractor, 6" aperture, 47" long, on and AVX mount. Wrong, wrong, wrong!
I realized I needed to figure out what I wanted to "go after", and how to do that right.
It took me a month figure out IF I wanted to pursue this. Turned out the Internet is full of space pictures.
Yeah, but they weren't MY pictures.
So I decided I liked Nebulae. And I began narrowing down on that pursuit. And the more I learned, the smaller, but more refined the telescopes got. Extra low Dispersion Triplet lenses were the way to go. AKA as: ED T refractors for my direction of interest.
So I began compiling "Wish Lists" of equipment, 3 of them, as I studied and refined how to get where I wanted to go. I knew it may be a one shot deal, so I wanted to be very careful about where I blew my wad.
That took an additional 4 months of ferreting on the Internet, and bugging the carp out of Friends here on UHH. Finally, I was embarrassing myself with holding out. I had a list almost $5,000 big. And that was the initial poke at the bear. I knew there would be add on's when the boxes arrived.
You see, as much as I studied, I still didn't know where it would take me, and all of it (I later learned) was somewhat bottom end stuff.
I was trusting Celestron and Orion names I knew from my childhood. Now that I'm older, and wiser, I've steered myself to better equipment altogether.

Climbing the learning curve was very hard for me. Mostly because boulders came rolling down the trail stopping and slowing me. Equipment failures plagued me at many turns, my AVX failed withing hours. But me being me, I figured it had to be something I was doing. It wasn't. By the time I got bounced back to Adorama Camera, it was day 15 of their 14 day return period. Nice folks!
So I turned to Amazon's Prime guarantee, sorry, they walked away from their advertised responsibility. And believe me, they paid for it for the rest of the year. I order anything and everything I wanted to look at, then sent it back.
Screw you Amazon!
So in the first year, my AVX spent 6 weeks down, on it's way to or from Celestron Service. Because it had bad electronics. I found a way to deal with the crap diodes in it by using a 12 volt battery ONLY as it's power supply.
I got to the 8 month mark and poof, off to Celestron again. That time they put their "Best Tech" on the case and it came back not only fixed, but tuned.
By babying it along I got it to about 3.5 years before it took it's final death throws and died. Right as the heat of winter was coming on, the best of Nebula season.
I almost bought an EQ6R while they were on sale. But the wife put the kibosh on that with Christmas coming. Wait until February, then you can replace it. Great!
I didn't waste my time as winter went along. I was studying mounts and decided to see what America had to offer, to get away from the ROC and the Chi-Comms bad electronic components. That was when I finally got back to Losmandy made by Hollywood General Machining. I signed on to the Losmandy web sites and made some friends there. One was Brian Valenti who hired on with Losmandy shortly after I bought my GM811G HD.
Yeah, the price was high, but the quality is beyond reproach of us struggling AP Wanna-Be's. I spent 4 months studying and plotting what would be the most ideal for me, and the goals I have for my Nebula imaging. When I placed my order, to be picked up personally at the factory in Burbank, CA; Tanya made sure they had everything, and had it all laid out for me to look over on arrival.
The real treat was to meet Scott, Tanya, and Brian in person. I had my 5 boxes of the GM811G HD loaded in my truck. The HD refers to the Tripod with the mount. It was a bit too heavy for little Tanya to put into it's shipping box, so she asked Scott if he'd mind lifting it into the double box they use for shipping. Scott lifted the tripod, and I steadied the box for it.
I headed home with my Losmandy mount in my truck filled with the satisfaction I made the right choice and had a lifetime mount to work with. Not have I been disappointed either.

It is said, and proven true, that your mount is the most important part of your AP equipment. For AP the "rule of thumb" was half the mounts rating to arrive at the top weight of your instrument load. If the mount has a load rating of 30 pounds (AVX rated load), then 15 pounds of equipment from the clamp up.
The GM811G has a suggested load limit of Photographic equipment of 50 pounds. My then current weight was 13.8 pounds from the bar up. Kind of like a fly sitting on top of a tank. Hardly noticeable.

As things went along, this AP is a lot like a black hole. You just keep feeding it money to get your results.
I can't say I have arrived at my ideal set-up yet, but I can't think of any changes I need to make at this time. Unless it would be to get a color camera, taking a big step backwards from my monaural camera.
I started out with a color camera. Then a good friend loaned me, then sold me my first quality color camera. And the results were instant successes. Really quite exciting after literally years of lackluster failures. Failures because I approached this with a tight budget, and got crap equipment. Due to my inexperience and fear to do the proper investment into it.

5 Friends here on UHH tried their hands at my early attempts of imaging. Successful imagers here, who could not work with the hash my early camera pulled from the skies.
The point being, IF you decide you would like to approach this wonderful vain of Photography, do so with full knowledge of of the costs and quality of equipment it can drag you to in the Black Hole it can become.
But Forrest Tanaka said it best in his opening statement: "I can't think of a more difficult and frustrating and rewarding kind of Photography."
During my months of researching how to enter into Astrophotography, I kept going back to YouTube, and Forrest's video's to help me understand how to begin. I probably watched them 6 times, then referred back to them countless times.
Here, on UHH, I scoured brains of every friend who would offer help.

I don't think I would have appreciated the successes I now enjoy if I hadn't worked through the failures on the way. But that is how I learn, I get my hands dirty and appreciate the harvest at the other end of the toil.

Only you can decide if you want to invest of yourself and your capitol into the triumphs you can find as you go along. But recall what Forrest said.
If you do decide to venture forth, there are folks here who will help you to succeed.
There is no "One Size fits All". But there are successes to glean knowledge from. And today's choices are vastly improved over 10 years ago.
If you have a camera, and a tripod, you can wet your whistle tonight with the Moon, or shooting some Star Trails.
I've found I enjoy doing time-lapsed video's with my stills and often intentionally do series' to build time lapses with.
Grab some star trails with your Camera, a wide angle lens, and an Intervalometer. (Mine is a tag along I plug in. Many cameras now come with the feature built into them.
So to answer you. How about you start right now?

But watch out for the Black Hole. You may get sucked in faster than you think.

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

Sounds like the same journey I started back in the late '60's when I built my first equatorial mount and shot my first astro-images with a Brownie 620 film camera. It has been a lot of water under bridge and a lot of $$$'s into the black hole of astrophotography since then!

bwa