[telescope115]

Astrophotography is something I never had the patience for.
Now that I’m retired, I have the patience, but can’t get out to a dark sky site.

[dragnet2]

I does take a lot of patience and the learning curve, at least for me, was pretty steep in regards to post processing of the data. Then it slowly became somewhat additive but I still have a lot to learn.

I now have a permanent set up, no need to polar align the scope, just flip some switches, open the dome and everything else can be remotely controlled, the cameras, the scope computer etc, from another computer inside the home. Setting up a scope on a tripod nightly and doing the polar alignment process was time consuming and excruciating and basically forced me to build a small observatory.

Btw, filters are available to help reduce all the artificial light scatter, but dark skies are hard to beat.

[dragnet2]

Btw, don't sweat not being at a real dark site if you have an interest in planetary, lunar, star clusters and other bright objects.

For example, using filters in the optical train, I shot this part of the Veil Nebula NGC6992 while living in "white zone" in the LA area.