carastro

Yes, she would have to sit the exam at an examination centre.

Just googled it. Seems available on line but very expensive.

I did the Edexel GCSE course about 9 years ago. It was excellent. I was pleased to get a Grade A. It gave me a good grounding in all aspects of Astrononomy though we only touched on the different types of telescope. But really worthwhile. At least two students were going on to study astrophysics at uni We did have Homework. l did however do it at an evening class at Greenwich Observatory. l am not sure if it is available to do on line. But l think there are a number of centres that do it now. Carole

Couldn't answer some of the computer stuff as just use a computer I don't analyse it.

The bias can be re-used as well. I must confess I am a bit lazy and rarely clean my optics but then the filterwheel and camera are kept together and sealed even when not on the rig. I do take flats every time though................ Except for - I have a camera and filterwheel attached to a Samyang lens which I don't separate, and I have re-used flats upto 18 months later and they have been fine. But you are correct in saying nothing should be moved. My separate Camera and filter wheel that I do remove from the telescope now and then, I take new flats every time the camera is moved. HTH

Autofocusser is not necessary, I have never used one. But some people like to automate everything. You can certainly do without one until such time as you feel you would like one. As a personal choice, I like the features of the Skywatcher telescopes such as the mounting rings and fitted finder which you can convert to a finder guider. WO scopes have stunning optics, but you cannot mount other stuff on it if you want to (dual rig for instance) or mount a finderscope without a bit of DIY. I had a WO scope, and it was supposed to rotate (if you wanted to rotate the FOV), but it only seemed to rotate when there was no camera inserted, which wasn't much help. Also on my particular WO scope (WOZS71) you had 2 screws to hold the camera in place which inevitably caused a bit of flop and tilt. There was no way to attach a "screw in" focal reducer, though I think some WO models might be different. In the end I swapped my WO scope for another Skywatcher (for my dual rig). Just my experience. You can image without guiding to start with, but you won't be able to do very long exposures without star trailing and therefore won't pick up much detail. You will soon see when you need a guide scope by length of your subs and shapes of your stars. But you can certainly get started without guiding. I agree with Olly, a second hand CCD camera might be a good option, though I cry when I think of the prices they sell for now having several CCD cameras myself. Carole

Absolutely, I was thinking of selling one of my 4 CCD cameras as I only need 3. (dual rig) and (Samyang set up which I don' like taking apart). But when I saw what others were having to sell their CCD cameras for, I thought I'd rather keep it as a spare than sell for a pittance. So hopefully they will "see me out". Am already running out of targets I can do from home.

I’m still using CCD. I have more than one and they still work well for me so l see no reason to change. Carole

Great progress Michael

Had to scratch my head at "ET", thought you had captured a UFO with this Iris for a minute, 🤣 Lovely images Adrian.

Fantastic Luke.

Here are a few of my early "howlers." I thought I had thrown them away. Some of yours are much much better. and the Piece de restistance is.......... You are permitted to put a laugh emoji against this one in particular.

I have been using a Bahtoniv Mask for years. I believe Pav Bahtinov not only did not patent his mask, and got little royatlties from it only from some companies who generously thought he deserved it. I thought I had heard he had since died, but can't seem to find anything on googling, I googled it to check and found this interview with him in Russian with sub titles in 2019

Here's a link to a couple of my images. You need to rotate this one clockwise by 90 degrees ish. and this is the tiddler underneath again my not so good image:

I can identify Rosette brightest one. Cone Nebula middle towards right in screen shot and just below that also in screenshot attached small nebula IC2169