The Horsehead Nebula and Flame Nebula (lower left). Narrowband hydrogen-alpha, sulfur II and oxygen III data was acquired over two nights, processed using Pixinsight and the channels were mapped to the Hubble Palette. Not my favorite color combination but it does bring out a lot of detail in the image.
Astrophotography is tough. Before you can produce anything of interest, you first need to learn how to use your equipment to acquire images and then you need to learn how to use the software tools to process those images.
On the acquisition side, you’re having to master the use of a lot of different hardware. You need to understand and be able to set up a telescope, a mount, an auto-focuser and a color wheel and connect all of these to a computer so you can guide the mount and acquire your images. If you make a mistake with any of these, you have probably wasted a nights worth of work. You can look for help online but everyones setup is slightly different so you’ll probably have to do a lot of experimentation to make your own equipment work properly.
On the processing side, the tools are daunting. My processing tool of choice is called Pixinsight which consists of a suite of processes that you run your images through to achieve your final image. Almost all the processes have multiple parameters that you can tweek to control the mathematics behind the processing of the images. I suspect few actually understand what all of the parameters do and mostly rely on experimentation to determine the best values for their images.
Understanding what processes to use and the order in which to apply them is another challange. For me, as I suspect it is for most people, the path to learning was to watch lots of YouTube videos, try out the various techniques, and over time, build up a repertoire of things that work while tossing out the things that dont. This takes many hours and often ends with sub-optimal results that you end up just throwing away. It can be frustrating.
Unless you have lots of time and patience, you should probably consider another hobby. On the other hand, if you like challenges and are willing to put in the time, it can be really fun.
