As hard as it may be to keep yourself from buying ‘just that one last thing’ – know that the time you put into this hobby is a far better investment than your cash.
Without the due diligence of learning proper telescope and mount setup like mastering polar alignment, and adequate post-processing techniques, you won’t be successful. In fact, nothing will guarantee that! We’ve seen (and created) some AMAZING images created with very modest equipment! Most often, the more the mount and telescope costs, the more skills it requires to use properly. Spending your hard-earned cash on the best optics and camera gear will never guarantee you great photos. The telescope doesn’t make the photo, the photographer does. Mistake #1: Investing money instead of time To help you save a little time (and money), we’ve come up with a list of five of the most common mistakes we or others have made on the road as beginner astrophotographers, so maybe you won’t have to! Humans: these “expensive” mistakes you’ll make are not only costly on your pocket, they also rob you of precious imaging time! But don’t despair because making mistakes is all part of the learning process, and some things are best learned by screwing up. So, if you’re a robot, you can stop reading now. You’re going to make mistakes, a lot of them. Luckily, we’ve all been through it, so we can help! Are you thinking deep-sky astrophotography is where you want to point your camera? Maybe you are ready to start attaching your DSLR or smartphone or point-and-shoot camera to your telescope to get those Hubble-like images of the cosmos! Slow down a bit, and remember to do your homework – because imaging deep-space objects is a definite step up in the learning curve, and it has its frustrations.