Start Here...

 Hello to the beginner astrophotographer.

This blog has been created as a centralized location to help answer a number of questions relatively fast, as you start this hobby.  Also keep in mind that there is a TON of information on various other blog sites and websites, in forums across the internet you can research.

Also, got to Youtube and search for terms you need information on.  I can not tell you the countless videos there are on youtube on a huge variety of topics.  If one video doesn't explain a given topic well, watch a different one by a different creative... there are plenty.  This hobby is going to require you to do a lot of research, and this blog site is not here to replace that, but just to give you a kick start, and help you know what further questions to research.

Also... Me.  I am not an expert or a professional.  I do not have all the answers either.  I am putting some information here, and I will try to expand this blog as time goes on, to add some useful information, while being careful not to overstep my knowledge.  If you are far more knowledgeable than I am, please keep in mind this blog site is primarily to help out beginners.  If you have a correction to suggest, please let me know, but be polite.  I don't know everything, and if I have gotten anything wrong, it was not intentional... but also I don't want to over complicate the information for beginners :)

Just to help you think through this initially, here is the first thing you should ask yourself:

• Do I understand that no matter how great of an image I take of a night sky object, someone will be able to find a better image in a 15 second google search?  

Okay, that might sound demotivating, but it's true for 99.999% of us.  None of us can compete with NASA.  That said, some of us can get pretty creative, and make some pretty amazing images.  But these images are for us, and for people like us. 

• If that's true, why am I doing this?  Why are any of us doing this?

The answer for the true astrophotographer is that we love astronomy, and there really is nothing like actually taking an image ourselves, in real time, of objects we are looking at in the sky.  It makes us feel connected, and it makes it feel more real.  Also, once we get pretty good at it, we can print our own images to hang on our wall, or put in a photo book... and know it's our own.  That's pretty cool!  Each of us might word it differently, but I think this is basically it.

 Before digging deep in and spending money on this, you should also ask yourself these questions:

• Is this a good hobby for me?  
• How much time am I willing to spend?  
• Am I motivated to research on my own, and spend hours doing that?  
• Am I motivated to spend hours working on a single image? 

Astrophotography is one of the more technically challenging forms of photography.  It is NOT rocket science, but it does take time, and there is a learning curve.  There is TONS of stuff to learn.  All of this is learnable.  You can do this, but just understand it takes time and effort.

Even if you have experience with professional cameras, and already understand the exposure triangle, you will find astrophotography to be quite different.  You may spend many, many hours taking images of just ONE target, and spend a good chunk of time post processing and combining all of those images.  Like I said, it's not rocket science, but for really good images, it will take time.  There are short term rewards... you will see your target on your camera screen, it just takes time to get that final image.

If you love astronomy, the effort will be worth it.  

Also, you have help.  Click on the links in this page, and do some reading :)