and so it begins…

I got into astronomy back in 2004 when I bought a Meade ETX-90 (which, astonishingly, they still make). This was a go-to scope, able to find things in the sky and automatically move to them. It came with a tripod and a couple of eyepieces. The plan was to get my feet wet, see some things, and hopefully take some pictures.

As dumb as it sounds, this picture showed me that I can do this. This was not taken with the ETX-90

We were able to see some things, but not many. We saw Saturn, and could actually see that it had rings. We saw Jupiter, amazed at how fast the moons moved day to day. Ultimately I sold the scope because it couldn’t really do what I wanted. Call it user error, call it a cheap mount, call it a bit of both. It never really fit the bill. Whatever we were able to see kind of danced all over the place in the eyepiece, and focusing was darned near impossible with the teeny single-speed focuser that moved the entire mount if you breathed on it.

Still, I was hooked.

There would be several missteps (mistakes?) before I landed on something really suitable for astrophotgraphy. Follow me on my journey…