Techniques

Well, I really cannot pass on any tips at the moment. I am too much of a beginner to help out. The best advice I can give
to any beginners, is be ready for a long haul! You will face many hours of frustration. And be careful about buying
equipment before you really understand what is needed! I wish I knew what I know now when I first ventured into CCDing.

Basically, my methods are very simple (and very inadequate). I also only shoot in mono at the moment.
Colour filters are on the agenda (see last paragraph!)

All my exposures are unguided. I can usually get from 30-60secs unguided sub exposures and then stack them with Maxim DL.
Also no darks are needed for the StarlightXpress SXV-H9 CCD. What a great sensitive camera it is.

I don't have a permanent setup, so it's a matter of dragging all the equipment outside, setting it all up, drift aligning and then much,
much later I can start to shoot! What a hassle! But still worth it for me to even roughly capture some of those beautiful and
mysterious objects from far away. Even when I get a so-so shot of some galaxy, I wonder if there may be some life form somewhere
within that galaxy. I like to keep an open mind about this. We Earthlings evolved, so why could not another (similar?)
life evolve elsewhere?

When I am financially able to, I shall purchase an auto guider that shall make life (and the photos) much better.
Of course, any generous person out there who wishes to help me out, please don't hesitate to contact me :-)

Location

Birregurra is a small town about 135klms southwest of Australia's 2nd largest city of Melbourne (population approaching 4 million).
About 500 people live in this town which is 40 klms inland from our famous and beautiful South West coast. I do have some light pollution.
To the northeast 70 klms away is Geelong, a small sized city with about 200,000 residents. Westwards and 20 klms away is the town
of Colac with about 6,500 residents. So there is a small amount of light glow from these two cities. My VLM? Haven't really worked it
out, but would probably be in the vicinity of at least 5.5 on a moonless night.

peter

birregurra...australia

7 November 2004