Motorising a Skylux mount.

You could consider this as a benevolent experiment. If it works out great, if you end up thinking it was a waste of 50quid then come back and tell us, it will save the person coming behind you 50 quid. So no matter what happens you don't feel the money was wasted. Anyway there's always someone who will give you 40quid for it to try the same experiment too.

No matter what kit you have, astrophotography can be very frustrating. Especially with the weather in this country. No amount of gear can change that. Here I think the quality of the gear comes in. With good gear you get to really maximise the precious clear skies instead of spending all that time trying to coax the gear to do what you want it to. On the downside when the gear starts getting complex, there is more to go wrong. In my case I used a CGE mount for years. It was a very capable mount but with the C14 on it it struggled annd I spent more time fiddling with the mount than actually getting anything done. Upgrading to the Ap1200 now means thats not an issue and I could make the whole process simpler by removing autoguiding from the equation.

In hindsight I wouldn't swap the experience and even the frustrations that went before. They stood me in good stead and I learned a lot of valuable lessons. So in one sense spending more money on better gear from the beginning will reduce the frustrations but as DaveMc alluded to you will miss out on the lessons learned from those frustrations.

Dave - I think your last para is spot on. The frustrations are really what drive you to do better - either in terms of technique or by buying better gear. The only time a frustration is counterproductive is if it it too much and you pack the whole game in.

Dave

By the way, it was a perfectly good goal

dmcdona wrote: By the way, it was a perfectly good goal

:rules: I knew that emoticon was there fore a reason At least there was no controversy about the two that followed :whistle:

Back to topic. I remember many of those nights when things didn't go well for various reasons. I would come in afterwards and spent some time just sitting thinking about what went wrong and how I could do it better next time. You know what, in a lot of cases the answer was simple. Get your stuff organised earlier and don't be expecting to just roll out the gear and switch it all on expecting it to work flawlessly. By getting everything set up early in a non rushed organised manner, I found that everything worked as expected far more frequently. When your rushing you only half do things like polar alignment etc. Get a workflow/checklist organised, even in your head (better written down). You'll be far more productive for it.

Dave.

PS Dave couldn't find the toffees on the league table then I realised I was only looking at the top half of the table :devil:

:rant: (Fabregas)

I also thought Arsenal had disappeared from the Prem - I was looking at all the clubs with more than 50 points...

Back on topic so... I agree - faffing around accounts for 90% of mistakes/delays. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail as a famous footballer once said...

I'd certainly agree with you there Dave(s), having a workflow/checklist and being organised prior to going out is a good idea. It's hard to think of everything that needs to be done / setup when your out in the dark and with one eye on the approaching cloud.

Tonight, I got my first oppotunity to try a shot of the stars since deciding to try this. I wasn't ready and just grabbed everything and ran. I had a nice dark sky site picked out about 6 miles from where I live, so I threw all in the car and headed off. When I got there, the sky was fantastic so I headed out and started to set up. Not being ready, I faffed about a bit and by the time I was ready to start shooting, the clouds had rolled in and the stars were gone. What really annoyed me was that had I been ready, I would certainly have had time to get a few shots off. Lesson learned!

Moral of the story, be prepared and know what you need to do.

lionsden wrote: Not being ready, I faffed about a bit and by the time I was ready to start shooting, the clouds had rolled in and the stars were gone.

Deja vu ...