If anyone is looking to get started with a homelab at a good price, I can highly recommend checking ebay for a Dell Wyse 5070. They flooded the market for $50 and are likely powerful enough for many needs. They have a M.2 slot that support SATA. The 'extended' version also has space for a small pcie card and has a parallel and 2 serial ports for a blast to the past.
I would say raspberry pi 5. cheap, small and widely used so much of the stuff is already done many times
I blame that dark/night photography is an impossible task. The tricks like long exposure, ISO boost and noise cleanup, saturation, hdr or whatever you throw at it, just wont be like your eyes. Photographers gets carried away in post and boost too much, and I understand why.
Northern lights - are awesome. I encourage you to see it if you havent. Go this winter! And take photos and you’ll know what I meen. The colors wont pop like these popular photos, but standing outside on a freezing winter night holding back your frost breath from blocking the view of the green lights moving like firely beams of across the sky. Hopefully you’re somewhere quiet with no light pollution. There is nothing like it - watching the reflections of the armor of the valkyrene as they march on valhal