I was off! No idea what I was doing… YouTube was my friend, but I will admit, much of what I was watching just made no sense.
I just did not have enough foundational knowledge to know what I needed to learn first.

So I muddled! And muddled, sometimes it went wrong, sometimes it went right, and sometimes it did not went at all.
But… from this, I found a process: Make a mistake and researched that mistake.
This actually helped a lot, I now was beginning to see what I did not know, and began to fill the gaps.
In two years I would say this process has taken me from an absolute beginner to a beginner 0.5. I am pleased with my progress.
I began to capture images, not great images, certainly not enough of them, but I had captured something! Did you know you needed more than one?
It was in this early process that I learnt about guiding, quite important apparently, who knew?
Focusing! Well, that seemed to help a bit and filters! I was on fire! Skint! But on fire.

On reflection, whilst I am now still convinced that I started with a good scope, I am not convinced that I started with the best camera option.
That’s not to say it is not a good camera, it very much is, but I think my head was turned more by the full frame sensor than anything else.

I became comfortable with my set up, with guidance from some fantastic people, I began to find my feet. The images began to improve, and I was happy with where I was at.
I was at this time processing my images with Sirle, I was getting good results!
good results with 30 images!
One issue I have is my garden faces south, I have a high bank of trees to the East, a low but substantial bank of trees to the West and a house to the North.
This gives me a narrow corridor in which to take images as DSO’s pass by to the South.
Alternatively, I have to wait until I can see a high object which I can spend some time on.
Thank goodness for Cygnus, Cassiopeia and Cepheus!