Welcome to the world of Amateur Astronomy. I went from $zero to $35 thousand in less than a year. I was just getting back into the hobby after a 30 year hiatus. I started with a Celestron 102SLT because I wasn't certain I would stick with it. The 102SLT goto gave me a reasonably priced entry point and grab and go capability.
Being a photographer, it wasn't long before I wanted to do astrophotography. I threw down for a Meade DSI only to find the 102SLT mount was inadequate. What next? I found a reasonable deal on a discontinued Meade 102ED on an LXD650 with a complete set of series 5000 EPs. Problem solved I thought until I discovered the LXD650 wasn't quite up to the "tracking" task either. The 102ED seemed to be lacking something as well. So, I acquired a Meade 10" f10 SCT OTA only to find out that the SCT OTA with additional counterweights was taxing the LXD650 in additional weight. I'm only into this astronomy thing 3 months now. I was starting to meet expectations with the one shot color Meade DSI until I realized that a monochrome camera and LRGB filtration was the right approach for astrophotos.
Still biting my lip in anticipation for decent astophotos, I jumped to a Losmandy G-11 mount. By this time I was starting to gain an appreciation for what represented quality and capability in equipment, especially optics. The Meade 102ED wasn't getting it anymore and I searched for an higher end solution. Next step -- a Takahashi TSA102. Now, I can't just slap a DSI on the Tak, it don't look right and the DSI represents a certain amount of inadequacy. How bout a nice SBIG ST2000XM.
Now that I got all this stuff (Don't worry, I'm using the heck out of it.), I discover that it is just not dark enough at my house and need to seek out a dark site. Remember that word portability.
You just can't throw all this high end equipment pell mell into the car and head into the darkness. Besides, there too much of it. So I gets me a pickup truck. Hmmm, now that don't look right -- all this equipment sitting in the bed of the truck and a shiny new Tak laid out in the back seat of the truck and the G-11 EQ head in the front seat. What if I want to take someone with me? Where are they gonna sit? And what about all these different boxes exposed to the weather and such in the back?
Well, I discovered a great company that makes storage cases for all this gear. So, now that I have all my equipment stored in some nice color coordinated Scopegaurd cases I'm ready for the road. It's been 8 months now since I started this madness.
Now all this stuff creates the need for more stuff which I collected along the way -- things like dovetails, rings, filters, guidescopes, power supplies, portable generator, counterweights, more better eyepieces, observing chair, field table -- oh yes, I got to have my 2.1G laptop computer to control it all.
Is there a moral here, I dunno maybe. In amateur astronomy, stuff begets more stuff and at this writing I still haven't reached Nirvana.
You know that the local paper here is advertising some nice acreage about 60 miles from where I live now. I wonder just how dark it gets out there -- I think I need a permanent observatory with a bigger scope/mount and a nice little cottage to go with it.
Scott
