Shawn C. Madden Howdy! Texas Astronomy · Shawn C Madden · ... · 4 · 45 · 0

SCMadden 0.00
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Howdy from North Dallas! New to the hobby so watching and learning.
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Dustin_Lee_Astrophotography 0.00
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Howdy from Houston!  What brought you into this incredible hobby?  What equipment do you currently own?  And, what are your aims for astronomy/astrophotography?

Dustin
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SCMadden 0.00
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Have looked to the stars most of my life. Observed a little in the '80s with a 4" Newt. Took up flying as a hobby and have since given that up as I could convince none of my family to fly with me! So, have taken up astrophotography. Have been at it only briefly but have been adding to the gear. Celestron 8SE as it was touted as most popular and versatile. I live in Dallas (bortle - new vocab word, 8ish) so saw advert for hyperstar as it would speed up the telescope so I was not imaging hours. Added a Barlow 2x for doing planets - just caught the conjunction before it retired below the horizon; filter slide with narrow band for the Bortleness of my neighborhood. 294C camera with a 120 for guiding. Just got the StarSense to speed up my aligning and to make it more Aggie proof.

I am doing this for meownself and for a blog I am writing exploring God's Universe (Natural Revelation) and God's Word (Special Revelation). If such interests you it is at http://textandtelescope.com. I can do my own translation from the Hebrew and Greek texts and so I set myself to also do my own imaging, not borrowing what others have shot. It has slowed down the blogging as I learn to do the later as well as I do the former!

Thanks for asking Dustin (have an nephew in the Coast Guard so named)! So, same question back to you.
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Dustin_Lee_Astrophotography 0.00
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That all sounds really cool.  I would love to learn to fly.  I have an cousin on my mother's side who is a pilot instructor.  He actually lives in Dallas!

That sounds like a reasonable setup and a good move going for the Hyperstar!  Are you using the Nexstar with the wedge?

I will certainly check out your site.  Thank you for the link!

As for myself, I have always been interested in space and never had a chance to be around anything astronomy related as a child or teen even.  I came accross an old Bresser refractor in a box that belonged to my best friend's late father.  The night I found it there was a full moon up, so we set it up and I was HOOKED.

Since, I have dropped thousands of dollars into this hobby and I know that is just the start of it.  I really enjoy deep sky astrophotography and want to start upping my game by imaging with longer focal length to get more detail in some of these incredible targets.

One fun adventure in the past year I've undertaken was driving from Houston to Cape Canaveral for the Mercury Transit November of 2019.  I not only captured the transit which would have been impossible due to the clouds that week, but my buiddy and I also got to watch a Spacex launch while the transit was occuring.
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SCMadden 0.00
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Loved flying but was too much money to spend with no one to go anywhere with. Great hobby too but it, like astronomy, ain't cheap. Here's a flight with a flying buddy and his daughter from a couple of years back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNMAyNdSfd4
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