How I got into Astrophotography part 1/3

How I got into Astrophotography part 1/3

I was fascinated by space since I was a little kid. I remember one particular book about space and I remember just going through the pages and watching the illustrations (I still have it by the way). Remembering all the 9 (8) planets and watching pictures of astronauts and the space shuttle, it was just awesome.

Unfortunately then my puberty came and with it my interest in space disappeared completely. I became so stupid, so confused, I didn't care about anything, science bored me. I was different person and I don't like remembering that phase. To cut the story short, it took me a lot of effort and many years to become the person I'm today.

Slowly my interest in science came back and I started reading about space again. Then in June 2015 I've decided to buy a telescope. I didn't know if I'm going to be into observing and even though I knew a lot about space, I knew nothing about observing and telescopes (I wasn't interested in astrophotography back then, I thought that only observatories could do it) With budget in mind and big chance that it's going to stay in corner forever after couple of weeks, I bought Omegon 76/700 Newtonian on AZ-1 mount. 

Looking back it was probably the worst choice but I didn't know what should I buy or if I'll be into it. Honestly it is as bad as it looks, flimsy mount, it screeches as you rotate it, little gust is enough to make the object you're observing disappear or at least jump like crazy, plastic eyepieces with narrow plastic lenses. It's not a good telescope and I thought a lot about selling it but I simply can't. It lead me to where I'm now and even though I was frustrated with it a lot, it will always be my first telescope. 

One time when I took it with me to my cottage I was observing the Moon and I thought to myself that I could try to take the picture through the eyepiece. After struggling for a few minutes I took picture I was happy enough with. This was the moment where it all really started. I wondered if I could take even better picture and even better. 

I started reading about astrophotography and slowly became addicted. I've decided to buy myself DSLR because I always liked taking pictures and I knew I'll need something for long exposure shots. Luckily for me that summer was huge sale on DLSRs and also Canon had also buy-back sale so I got my Canon 100D with two lenses for half the price. Then I just got programmable cable shutter and tripod and I was ready to go. 

Messier 31

This is my first picture of the deepsky object, it is the Andromeda Galaxy. I took it without any tracking or telescope. I just put my camera on the tripod with lens set to 200mm and made 100x5s exposures which I then stacked in Deep Sky Stacker. I was pretty happy with it at the time. One thing was certain... I wanted more.