photography using a remote observatory

ive always loved the idea of astrophotography but it wasnt until covid that i got serious with it and decided to invest time and money in it. I do a lot of my shooting in my backyard but im limited in what i can shoot there due to light pollution,tree/house obstruction and a limited equipment budget since astrophotography equipment can be a black hole for money

earlier this year i decided to take the next step and start using a remote observatory. for a monthly fee i have access to their equipment. i use http://www.telescope.live i pay $50 a month for 50 "credits" on their system . thee are a couple of different ways i can use their system

the first way is i can download the data they have already acquired. these are some of the top astrophotography targets. for instance the orion nebula. i can download an hours worth of data using different filter for about 1 credit or so. or i cna downlaod all the data they have on an object,the cost depends on how much data they have but it can be 10-15 hours of data or more

the second way i can basically control everything. pick the telescope i want to use (they have scopes in varying locations so you can shoot both northern and southern hemisphere object) the filters i want to use ,how long each exposure shoould be,how many exposures total and how far away from a full moon should the shooting occur. this costs much more in credits depending on the scope.

I just took my first shots using teh second method. I wanted to shoot a group of galaxies called the deer lick group. its 5 galaxies very close to each other. one large one (ngc 7331) and 4 smaller ones that are much further away . near by is another group of galaxies called stephens quintet. they didnt have any data that included both groups which is what i wanted.

got the final data last night and spent today processing it . they send you the raw un processed and unstacked data for you to do with what you want. i used software called pixinsight and then photoshop to process it



this is just the deerlick group. the bigger galaxy is about 40 million light years away and the smaller ones about 300 million light years away.




this is the deer lick group and stephens quintet below it. the quintet is much further away,on the order of 400 million light years away.