On Wednesday at 7, (My apologies, This sat in draft, and I wondered why no forum replies (oops!))
@jbirzer and I will be starting a discussion on astrophotography (AP), and some of the equipment. To also get what if any classes (Like an Intro to DSLRs/Mirrorless (more general photography, since AP is very technical), Intro to Astrophotography, and Astrophotography processing, being the examples that spring to mind) or if we want something like a monthly/weekly/semi-weekly discussion group on it going.
I’ve been doing astrophotography for just over 5 years, and I’ve done some things like modifying telescope mounts to run the free and open source OnStep software (main@onstep.groups.io | Wiki) which I’ll be bringing examples of, as well as contributing to the INDI (https://indilib.org/) OnStep driver (which works pretty well now.) and some minor contributions to OnStep itself.
One of them has involved using the electronics lab (soldering), fablab (laser cutter to cut gears for the focuser, 3d printers for the motor mounts) and metalshop (bandsaw, lathe (though the lathe was at home))
It’s a very technical hobby, and can either be expensive, or relatively cheap (You can get started with just a camera, I’ve even used a Raspberry Pi camera (one of the Arducam ones) to get some wide fields that look good, and some on a normal Pi camera of planets through a telescope which look pretty good). We’ll have some examples, of types of telescopes and mounts.