I first became interested in astronomy many years ago after reading Arthur C. Clark and Asimov.
At first, I was puzzled at not being able to see the objects as they were presented in the textbooks. Then I started to understand the difference between high magnification and good light gathering ability in telescopes. I only messed around looking at solar system objects casually. I remember reading that Halley's Comet was due in 1986, and wow, that was 20 years in the future!
But 1986 came, and so did the comet, re-kindling my interest. I had to do some work to determine visibility times for myself. From my crude calculations, I saw that it should be visible from our location at about 3-00 am in March, whereas the media were not expecting it until April. So, at 3-00am I went to a nearby hill, and POW! It really hit me. I went & woke the rest of the family, and they all were impressed. ( I did have their approval to wake them if it was worthwhile!)
The next morning, I was ready with a camera taped to a simple spotting scope, and took some photos using the scope to centre the comet. When the photos came back, I was hooked.
That was the start of a more serious approach to observing the night sky.
Since then, I have done my observing with naked eye, binoculars, 50mm refractor, 4.5" & 10" reflectors, and home built camera tracker. I haven't advanced science at all, but I have found the challenges exciting.
Especially when I was involved in occultation observations...I wasn't very good at finding my way around the fainter stars, and I would find the target star a few nights before the event and get familiar with the sky there.
Then, on the night, would find the target star again, then track it manually for up to 3 hours before the predicted time. That was a bit trying in winter, but I learnt a lot.
I encourage anyone who has any sort of interest in the night sky to do what you can with what you have. Don't let big words that you don't understand, or price tags put you off.
It doesn't matter what we do, we all have to start at the beginning. This is an image of Comet Hyakutake taken with an average camera with 50mm lens fitted. The sky isn't as dark as it should be, but I wanted to get as much of the tail as possible. It was taken by the same method as Comet Halley, but this time I fixed the camera to the 4.5" reflector, then tracked a guide star in the telescope eyepiece. Exposure time with 200ASA film was 3 minutes.
Here is comet Hale-Bopp on May 10 from our location in South Australia. This was 3 mins (at dusk), 50mm,f1.8, tracked manually, 100 ASA. Yes, I'm annoyed about the steel frame across the pic! It was the best location I could find at the time with an unobscured horizon.
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This is an image of Comet Hyakutake taken with an average camera with 50mm lens fitted. The sky isn't as dark as it should be, but I wanted to get as much of the tail as possible. It was taken by the same method as Comet Halley, but this time I fixed the camera to the 4.5" reflector, then tracked a guide star in the telescope eyepiece.
Here is comet Hale-Bopp on May 10 from our location in South Australia. This was 3 mins (at dusk), 50mm,f1.8, tracked manually, 100 ASA.