fisher.reese•10d agoProlific Poster

Swapped my DSLR for a 6 inch Dobsonian 2 months ago

I used to spend hours stacking and editing deep sky photos from my camera rig. Now I just sit outside with a 6 inch Orion SkyQuest Dob and look at the Andromeda Galaxy directly. No laptop, no cables, no processing. Took a trip to Cherry Springs State Park in Pennsylvania and a guy let me look through his 12 inch Dob, and I sold my camera setup the next week. Anybody else drop astrophotography for pure visual observing?

2 comments

2 Comments

reese_garcia10d ago

Man that's exactly what happened to me. Sold my Canon T3i and all the tracking gear after one night with a 10 inch dob at a star party. The difference is night and day. Photographing DSOs always felt like work. Sitting on a computer for hours just to get a picture that still didn't look as good as what I could see with my own eyes for 30 seconds. Now I just grab the scope, walk out to the driveway, and find the Ring Nebula in about two minutes. No batteries, no cables, no nothing. Telescope is just me and the sky again.

schmidt.willow10d ago

Did you ever read that article about how your brain processes visual information differently when you look through an eyepiece versus staring at a screen? I forget where I saw it, but it made a lot of sense. Something about how the live view through the scope activates the same part of your brain as just looking around normally, while processing a stacked image is like reading a report about a place instead of actually being there. That really stuck with me, especially hearing you describe the difference. The Ring Nebula in two minutes with no setup sounds like the whole point of this hobby to me.