Total Newbie

I'm user donheff and just joined today. 

I live in Bortle 9, Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, USA and have a small back yard ringed with trees.  The only image capturing I have done myself is moon and planetary on my 25 year old homemade, manual, 6" Dob.  I am fascinated by the deep space images amateurs are creating so recently became obsessed with learning how to process such images.  Getting my own equipment to capture the data seemed a nonstarter in my location.

With limited familiarity with planetary stacking and processing apps, and rudimentary Gimp skills, I faced a somewhat steep learning curve on DSOs.  Starting a few months ago, using other peoples' data, I picked up a bit of knowledge on stretching and post processing in Gimp.  Last month I rented time on two telescopes at the Utah Desert Remote Observatory and got data on Andromeda, the Eagle Nebula, Veil, and M101.  This has enabled me to begin learning to use DSS, Siril, Sirilic, Astrodenoisepy, Starnet++, Astrosharp, Photoshop, etc.

Now I would like to gain some experience setting up my own projects.  After reading discussions on Cloudy Nights, I concluded that RoboScopes would be sort of a hybrid between DIY and more assisted sites like I was using.  That sounds like it will give me the closest to hands on as I will get with remote imaging.

I chose a Silver plan because I need to find out if this will work well for me (and vice versus).  If it does, I will likely upgrade to reduce the cost per object imaged.  So far, I have been a bit confused.  The sign up sheet wanted a tax ID which I assume is EU specific.  I got past that with bogus data but after I got registered (I believe as donheff) I was presented with another login form with a strange user name and password.  After getting lost there I concluded that it was probably setting me up with an external Cloud based file sharing service.  I think I eventually sorted things out.  If my post is from donheff, that supports my conclusion.

I will see if I can figure out enough about setting up projects to schedule something in the next few days before I disappear to the beach for a couple of weeks.  If not, I will try in early August.  In any event, I will be happy to share my first results (good or bad) if it looks like that is welcomed here.

Don