Hello from Las Vegas Introduce yourself! · Jason Livingston · ... · 1 · 106 · 0

From my backyard in Henderson, Nevada, I've been imaging for about 2 years now.  Starting with lunar and planetary imaging, I've slowly made my way over to deep sky.  Using an 80mm refractor and a color camera, I've taken it about as far as I want to go using narrowband filters. I've finally got a mono camera on order. 

I've been slowly buying new items and learning as I go.  From a 10" dobsonian with an equatorial platform, I imaged the planets and the moon.  I moved to a EQ6r goto mount and eventually added an ASIAIR Plus.

I got my start in the late '80's when I was a teenager.  I learned the sky and got good at finding objects on my own with my grandfather's 60mm Unitron.   My father over did it and bought me a 12.5 research grade Meade telescope. While it was truly awesome, imaging was too difficult using film back then.  Especially starting with a 12.5 inch telescope.  That and the difficult Indiana skies made stargazing a rare event.   It sat for years and I sold it after college.  

I got back into the hobby briefly after getting an ETX-125.  I was not impressed. I remembered how great looking at the moon was in that 12.5 inch telescope. The ETX just couldn't compete. That and the go-to features weren't as great as advertised.  That was shortly sold too.

It wasn't until I moved to Nevada and finally had a decent back yard did my situation allow getting back into the hobby.  A 10" dobsonian was a perfect re-introduction to the hobby. It gave me some great views and I enjoyed learning astrophotography.   I moved on from that and now enjoy the benefits of go-to mounts, plate solving and the automation of the ASIAir Plus. 

I couldn't have imagined how far this hobby had gone.  When I was a kid the best images of Jupiter were from Voyager 1. Not anymore.

Last week, I finally made the move and purchased PixInsight.  I'm finding it so much easier to get better results than with PhotoShop.  When I started, I created a YouTube channel to document my progress.  I just make little shorts of a few images and that's about it.  I'd enjoy putting more time into it and pass on a few things I've learned.