Greetings humans and welcome to Sussex Astro Imaging, my first attempt at building a website. Hopefully the learning curve for producing this site won't be quite as steep as that of astronomy, or to be more precise, astro imaging. With this site I aim to share my astronomy related experiences which will hopefully help those taking their first steps into astro imaging.

Like many who venture into astro imaging I was hooked by the beautiful pictures of space, both in magazines and online. I'd always had an interest in astronomy, although I'd never really read much as I'm not much of a reader, I just enjoyed looking at the amazing astro images. The mystery of what's out there is fascinating and I'd always wanted to see a planet or galaxy with my own eyes.

The temptation finally became too great while on a weekend break after I'd bought a copy of The Sky at Night. Its images rekindled a dormant passion and the equipment available looked just as interesting. I had absolutely no idea what types of telescopes were available, or what the benefits were specific to each type. As soon as I'd returned from the weekend I visited an astronomy retailer and blindly sucked up all the salesman's advice.

On my second visit to the store I bought my first telescope. Looking back I wish I'd visited more retailers and asked more enthusiasts questions to see what equipment would suit my needs as I might have spent the money differently. Anyway, in July 2007 I bought my first telescope with dreams of seeing planets appearing large in the eyepiece and beautifully detailed galaxies, just like the pictures you've no doubt seen in magazines etc. The harsh reality is that it's just not that simple.

I've experienced no end of problems since I began my quest to produce a half decent astro image, and although I've now produced a few images of reasonable quality, they're light years behind those of more experienced imagers. While trying to get to grips with imaging deep sky objects I decided to keep it as simple as possible and stick with black and white images. However, as of July 2009 I have a filter wheel with colour filters and have produced my first colour deep sky image having processed the raw data with Nebulosity2. I will detail within this site the necessary equipment for guided imaging, how I achieved it and provide tutorials on the various guiding, imaging and processing software programs I use.