Why I don't shoot astrophotography from my backyard

This is a quick video explaining my reasoning behind moving all of my deep sky astrophotography to remote locations, instead of capturing images from my backyard. Great images can still be captured from backyards, but to maximize my cost efficiency, I have chosen to go remote. I don't recommend this for everyone, however this is what made sense for me, and I hope my thought process gives you something to think about for improving your own astrophotos.

[@MrScottless]

I am one of those astrophotographers in Seattle and I confirm - it is miserable here within 150 miles from downtown in any direction.

[@musa7606]

Automation is the key. I live in the Eastern US, but when I get good nights, I make the most of them. Something like the ASI Air lets me go sundown to sun up while I sleep soundly.

[@najibnajjar9526]

Thank you Bray for your bold honesty and truth on when it is really worth to upgrade your gear. I realized from what your goals in astro are and how much of a difference my goals or even more importantly my limitations with amount of seeing in my area and balancing livelihoods. I admire your thoughts that you put out there for us. Keep it up.👍🏼

[@astrofalls]

Just wanna help people make sure they get the best they can with what is possible

[@Luftbubblan]

I got a fairly expensive setup for amature, not many good nights a year where i live: Sweden. At some point of the year i don't even have darkness and when winter hits the weather is very bad for many months. Remote setup would be a dream but too much money. I still think its worth it tho, and there's pretty much no running cost.

[@astrofalls]

Yeah what’s worth it varies for everyone. What I was trying to get at is the idle time if your weather is bad. A less expensive telescope running 24/7 is better than a more expensive one not seeing use

[@Milttzu]

I can relate to that! I just got new scope a month ago and haven't been able to take proper data.. in a month lol ! I'm your neighbour (Finland). Remote is definitely my plan in the future. Hope we'll have clear skies soon 😅

[@alexanderreinders4009]

@@astrofalls a less expensive telescope won't make better weather. Running a setup 24/7 is not possible. What was your your hobby if you lived in Great Britain?

[@Rob_1472]

Being in the UK 150 clear nights would be a dream. I understand what he’s getting at about utility derived from a clear site but to associate it with cost / clear night makes no sense. Most amateur astrophotographers can’t afford the running cost. Clearly not an accountant and has no kids. Not not like he’s saying the cost of electricity is so high that over 4 years you’re better off in a remote site. With limited clear skies one may wish to maximise the limited opportunities and get good optics to take advantage of the conditions when they arise. I like astro vids on KZbin but sometimes people really do put out content that’s not well informed especially when you talk economics with no economic fundamentals in your argument

[@gonlaserna]

Tänkte bara fråga hur är det då under sommar månaderna? Går det ens att fota Vintergatan? Allt ljus?!!!!

[@ziggyfrnds]

Your cat's like "not here to listen to you or anything....but your shoulder looks like a great spot to hang out" :D But you do raise valid points, my experience is a little different in that I live in Sydney, australia where normally we would get clear nights much of the year and bortle 1-2 locations are relatively close-by....but the last 2 years we've had la nina which means incessant clouds and rain and flooding for us in eastern Aussie. I have 1000's of $$ of equipment just lying in storage waiting for clear nights. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

[@Dorkyand40]

Super happy you have the ability to do that but in my world the maths add up to more then my mortgage and 2 car payments per month. It would be great if someone could offer a better value based remote hosting site. 500ish a month ok but 2k is a hard pass.

[@astrofalls]

There are definitely places that are 500ish or even less. West Texas is like $300 something

[@3DAstroTC]

That kitten 😂 also, GREAT explanation of the perspective!

[@GarnettLeary]

Valid points. I often wonder why I invest so much time, money, and energy into solar system objects from home. Here the humidity is so atrocious the seeing is horrible. I thought recently about how many nights I was able to image. Three out of four months. Sad. These are the hard truths. Nice video.

[@vampolascott36]

Nice Takahashi! I’ve got two of them, a Mewlon 180c and FC-100DC that I mainly use with eyepieces. But I’m going to image with them too. I have Bortle 2 skies an hours drive away.

[@utahdesertremoteobservator8328]

You certainly make some good points, but I'd go even further. A remote observatory like Utah Desert Remote Observatories allows you to image ALL NIGHT on every clear night, and you don't have to be physically involved. You can sleep, or go to a party, or go to work, or whatever other time commitments you have while your remote telescope is collecting data for you. Very few of us have a lifestyle that would let us commit that much time to sitting next to a telescope. Mostly I sleep while the telescope is working. I use DropBox to transfer files as their created so when I get up in the morning the night's images are already on my home computer waiting for me. The result is more data and better data.

[@astrofalls]

Very true, it allows a lot more multi-tasking to be possible! Pretty soon when I ship my Southern Hemisphere scope out due to the timezone shift I will be imaging 24/7, which is of course impossible to do in person

[@DSOImager]

You're a professional astrophotographer? I'd like to hear more about that :) I get a decent amount of clear nights in the Texas hill country... but getting a remote setup is probably an eventuality. I always thought I would need a highend mount with encoders to run reliably in a remote location. Do you think something like an eq6 would suffice (with an appropriate scope)?

[@astrofalls]

The only thing you really need mount wise is a mechanical homing function! This is so when the power goes out, you can home your mount and bring it back to a place where it knows it’s supposed to be, and you can resume slewing from there. Without this it can be very difficult to remote image

[@user-lt9py2pu6u]

Spot on with your comments Bray. I live in an area of the UK which probably has less than a hundred clear nights a year ( and many of the "clear nights" are anything but with poor transparency ) which is one of the reasons that I will not be investing in any more scopes or cameras anytime soon. Last winter I managed to capture enough data to produce SHO images of just two targets plus some Ha data for a further three which I was able to use to improve some old images taken with a DSLR a few years ago but was unable to capture the OIII / SII data to complete the SHO images for these. (I did manage to capture images of the so called green comment six times between December and February though )

[@frosthastrophotography]

Thank you for the video! I live in a farily good place when it comes to bortle (4) but so far this season I only enjoyed about 4-5 clear nights or partly clear in 4 months, that is maybe one clear night each month. I do have my own observatory just to take advantage of these nights, but I really want more. Since I live up north (63 degress) I can't make use of the summer months at all because it's never dark, so that is also an issue. What do I do, move to spain?

[@bloodstone2000]

GREAT point Bray! I happen to live close to Zion Canyon with amazing Bortle 1-2 Skys literally a 10 minute drive from my house . Craig Stocks just started Utah Desert Remote observatories about 45 minutes from here. So for people like me ? We are in the area remote observatories would be .. great Video.

[@astrofalls]

Yeah your backyard is pretty much perfect! Just build your own roll off roof and call it a day

[@geraldrobinson9991]

I live in Eagle Mountain, Utah and can't believe the number of cloudy nights here. Seems like this year has been the worst since I have lived here.

[@rtpman1953]

Exactly. I considered those facts for years. Where did you find a host site that allows you to leave your gear setup? I'm guessing they have someone on site to assist when things go wrong? I live in NC where we have at best about 4 nights per month and Murphy's law says those will be near full moon. Since 2017 I travel to a dark site in AZ three times per year. I have a RV that I keep in storage in NM so that I don't have to haul it back and forth from NC to AZ. I am able to stay there for 30+ days at a time and I can usually figure about 70% clear nights plus I can enjoy camping in my RV. I set up a 10 X 10 ft wind break so my gear stays up ready to use right outside my RV.

[@brianhoskins1979]

I'm definitely in the amateur leagues, if not actually the novice. In fact my astro gear is mainly general purpose photography gear used for astro. I think the only astro specific gear I have is the tracker, really. But even then, with minimal investment made, astrophotography in my area can be very frustrating. I am fortunate that a half hour drive puts me under a nice dark sky. But the problem is weather. First of all, if I want to do deep space photography then of course I only get approx 2 weeks per month because of the Moon. And in that 2 weeks I always struggle to get a clear sky. And even if I do get a clear sky, I have the work next day factor to consider unless I am really lucky to get a moonless clear night on the weekend. And many times it's a case of in between weather where there is the potential for a clearing of skies and I go out with all my gear, get set up, and the clear skies never come or they were there initially and they go. Living in Wales, with an interest in astrophotography, we have to suffer for our hobby.

[@astrofalls]

I have huge respect for people who still go out and get images done in conditions like this! Probably makes it all the more satisfying when you get a good image. I think all is astrophotographers like the pain anyways

[@TexasEngineerScotty]

Thanks for your content. I find all your videos super interesting because they go into subjects very different than most astro channels. I apologize for responding to a two month old video, I only discovered your content a few weeks ago and i'm working my way through it. Specific to this video, how much actual hands-on experience do you think and individual needs before he can set something up remotely and get the most use out of it? Next and final preface statement and question: I certainly understand how a person such as yourself who makes their living through the scope and camera would desire maximum opportunities for data acquisition even at an incremental cost. Do you think for an advanced amateur $10k/year is worth it? or maybe a better way to think of it is how big of an improvement do you need to see for $10k/year to be worth it? I live about 50 miles north of Dallas in what the old bortle data map says is 5.5 but my guess is more like 6 or 7 now. Just accounting for cloud cover and not for seeing I feel like I can be doing SOMETHING outside around 30%-40% of nights. I probably have only $10K in gear (3k mount, 2k scope, 2.5K camera, 2K filters, 1K accessories) I could spend that 10K again on the same setup and double my data acquisition and in two years triple it? Anyway, I loved thinking about it like that, our time is finite and we can't buy more so it makes for interesting scaling factors on "opportunity cost". Thanks again!

[@Miguel_Noppe]

Good points for sure. I'm in Belgium, which isn't great for AP. But I prefer to have my gear here in my own back yard. But maybe some day I'll put something in Spain if I can convince the CFO....

[@NeilCorke]

Good advice - plus you don't have to lug heavy gear about in the dark!

[@jlecomte0719]

This is really good food for thoughts, thanks for putting this video together! However, at prices starting between $1,500 and $2,000 per month for SRO (based on what I’ve read, they don’t publish prices on their web site), I think it’s just way too steep for the vast majority of amateur astronomers.

[@astrofalls]

For a pier SRO does come at a high cost but that’s just because the seeing conditions, it’s way cheaper if you’re keeping it on a tripod. There are also other places ranging from $300 to $700 a month, but each location comes with its own trade offs

[@nikaxstrophotography]

@@astrofalls still a lot of money for the layperson

[@realmcerono]

I feel like I had 10 clear nights the whole year so far. Switzerland is horrible with all its lakes and mountains and its getting worse over the years.

[@hael8680]

"I cannot do my projects with 2 clear nights per week".... how about 2 clear nights per month ...?🤔😞 That's what I have.

[@cryhavoc38]

Keep saying the Seattle area gets 90% rain. Keep people from moving here ;)

[@bmbaum]

cries in PNW...