Please, nothing so serious, nor Sirius, either way!Chris Peterson wrote:That, of course, is what ultimately determines whether someone is a serious visual astronomer or a serious imager.Nitpicker wrote:Even though I'm only just starting out on the image processing side of things, I'm already feeling that I don't enjoy it quite as much as actually being out under the sky at night. This may prove to be the real limiting factor of my attempts at astrophotography. It has to be fun, above all else.
A camera can be used to image things which simply cannot be seen at all with the eye. It can also be used to generate animations of events that might otherwise be difficult to visualise, and simply to keep a record of what one saw at a particular time, which is good for one's memory. The images might be blurry and/or lacking in contrast, but still better than nothing. True, I have not used the best kind of camera for this particular job, leading me to push the focal length too far, meaning that no amount of processing could make it significantly better. But it is quite a good representation of what my brain remembers of the view of Jupiter through the eyepiece.I still have a couple of tricks up my sleeve to try and improve my planetary imaging technique, still using this same camera. But I just can't see myself going down the quadruply more arduous path of monochrome photography and processing LRGB channels. I'm not trying to become a great astrophotographer, just a slightly better one.
