Author here, it's a whole shitload of work, but going through it lets you do the bigger DSOs (M42 or Andromeda for example) without spending a boatload on a mount, tele, tracker, etc.
Do you hang out with the Lowbrow Astronomers at all? I photograph them sometimes
Nope, no idea who they even are honestly. I only found this website (which seems pretty nice) through the traffic sources function of blogspot. Seems pretty nice, like a reddit circa 2007 or something, though I don't think the format could handle getting too huge.
Or here are a few more of my shots. One day it would be fun to learn astrophotography.
Sorry, I just assumed you were from Ann Arbor. I'm not very good at using Hubski. I'm sure it says somewhere where you're from.
The Lowbrow Astronomers are a local group here with big, custom scopes that they let the public look through at open houses from time to time. They like to talk about "photon gathering" all the time. They can answer lots of questions. Just a lot of fun looking back in time through their scopes. http://markbialek.com/astronomy-at-peach-mountain/#[gallery].../
talking about "photon gathering" is pretty legitimate, so long as you're shooting RAW, you're literally counting photons. For a normal daytime exposure where there are billions hitting the sensor per second, big deal. But for astrophotography where there are so far fewer, it's a pretty big deal. Think of each photosite as a bucket. Each time a photon hits it, it fills a little more, and the recorded exposure is a little brighter for that pixel. Electronically, each photon disrupts the electric field present on the photosite, and the amount of disruption is the # of photons, and thus exposure level. So yes, photon gathering is something to think about indeed, you just have to be super nerdy. Not that there's anything wrong with that ;)