My Astro Journey

I’ve been imaging for over a decade now, and the journey has been long with deep lows, intense highs and a growing family of wonderful astrobuddies.

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My first space experience, when I was about 11 years old, was when my dad handed me a beautiful, antique, brass spy glass. It was in the early 70s when there seemed to be many more clear skies than there are now. I trained the spy glass on the nearly-full Moon one cold winter’s night and was stunned at the sight. ‘The Man in the Moon’ was something we’d all heard about, seeing the vague splotches of grey on the Moon’s surface, but to see the features so clearly, excited me as well as confused me! I didn’t know what I was seeing. I saw what seemed like mountains at the edge of the Moon which took my breath away, but now I know they were crater walls defined by the terminator: the dividing line marking the edge between day and night on the Moon.

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Leap forward over two decades, in my late 30s, when I got my first telescope. I had no idea what I was doing so I asked the shop what would be best kit to get started in imaging. I bought a Celestron C6-N, 6” Newtonian on a simple equatorial tripod with slo-mo hand controls to move the scope. My issue was that I didn’t understand how it all worked. I have AuDHD (autism/ADHD) and I find certain concepts extremely hard to understand. I joined the wonderful online group The Stargazer’s Lounge (SGL) which was full of knowledge and advice. I had so much help but, without being shown, I couldn’t work out what to do practically. I tried so hard to find faint objects in the sky but with no success. I could only find the Moon. I gave up in despair and packed the scope away for months.

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I eventually got enough money to buy a Skywatcher HEQ5 Pro motor-driven mount and a Skywatcher 200P Newtonian telescope. I had so much trouble understanding how to polar align and was given complicated instructions (oh, how that has changed now!) but I succeeded enough to get the handset to give me the in-built guided tour. I saw so many deep-sky objects I danced around the garden in joy! They were faint and fuzzy, hence their name ‘Faint Fuzzies’, but understanding what they were and how long those photons of light took to get to my eye was mind-blowing. I still continued to struggle though. I wanted to image and learn guiding but just couldn’t understand it. Months and months went by, often with my scope in storage as I was too lacking in confidence to take it out.

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That started to change when I went to my first star party with SGL. I was shown collimation and how to properly set up my scope. I had an old Canon EOS 40D which I trained on the ring nebula (M57). To my shock and delight, there was the ring displayed on my camera's view screen. I couldn’t breathe for a moment. I’d done it! I ran around the campsite showing bewildered astro campers my first ever image. It was a little blurry and rather noisy but I had passed the first hurdle.

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I still had guiding to learn and it seemed to take forever. I learn best by being shown, so my real break happened when I had the incredible luck of meeting the Chipping Norton Amateur Astronomy Group (CNAAG) in January 2008. My hubby and I with our then-young daughter were in Chippy to see a pantomime at the theatre and CNAAG were set up in town, giving an outreach event. I found them friendly and knowledgeable so I decided to join them. That was when it all started to take off.

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CNAAG have observing nights at the Rollright Stones near Chippy and I attended as often as I could. The main person who brought me on in my knowledge is the brilliant Mel Gigg. He taught me so much about set-up, guiding, camera settings and image processing, with his endless patience and kindness. Without him I’m sure I wouldn’t have progressed as well as I did.

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A few years ago I was privileged to join the then fledgling and wonderful Facebook group, UK Cloud Magnets. It’s there I met many more talented imagers who, over the years, have given me much advice and especially with image processing. I still plague them with cries for help and Zoom imaging tutorials and probably will continue to do so.

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My first camera was an old Canon EOS 40D (very expensive at the time!), then a 600D which I had modified to register the hydrogen alpha wavelength, then the wonderful Atik 614L+ mono astrocam and finally a ZWO ASI533MC cooled one-shot colour astrocam. Much is changing in the astro-imaging world. New software, new hardware and now the advent of exciting smart telescopes which will revolutionise imaging. As I age and find the rigours of setting up with heavy kit more and more difficult, I can see myself one day with one of these new scopes.

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The future is here and it’s incredible.

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Clear skies all,

Alexandra Browne