A Starguy's Guide to Astrophotography

I've been a skywatcher all my life. Like a lot of kids, I had a telescope but, like too many of those kids, I had a lousy telescope. It didn't dampen my enthusiasm for space and space exploration but it did turn me off of using a telescope. In my late 20s, I got another telescope but it wasn't much better than what I had as a kid. But I was more patient and took that terrible little thrift store scope about as far as I could. When I saw the rings of Saturn, I was hooked. A few months later, I got what I thought was a better telescope. It wasn't really but at least this one had glass eyepieces rather than acrylic. And Saturn looked better. It would be a few more years before I got access to a really good telescope through my workplace at a planetarium.  After that, I built my own 10" telescope under the tutelage of the late John Dobson. As much as I loved that scope (and I still do), it wasn't really set up for astrophotography. I tried taking pictures w